Holistic and Iterative Development and Dissemination of Conceptual Traffic Signal Questions

AbstractConceptual questions can be used to improve student’s understanding through interactive engagement and formative assessment; however, there is a lack of developed conceptual questions in transportation engineering. This paper reports on the development, implementation, refinement, and evaluation of conceptual questions about traffic signals that include students rating of confidence in their solution. Based on student and practicing engineer traffic signal misconceptions, 94 conceptual questions were developed and implemented by 10 public university instructors. Five patterns of student responses were identified in terms of correctness and student confidence: all correct, all confident, all lack confidence, correct-confident combined with incorrect-lacks confidence, and correct-lacks confidence combined with incorrect-confident. Furthermore, the experiences of instructors using conceptual questions with students were considered through semistructured interviews. Conceptual questions about fundamental aspects of traffic engineering were most frequently selected, conventional multiple choice questions were the most popular type of questions, and enriching exam materials or creating challenging discussions were the primary goals of implementation. While every participant expressed that they will use the material again in the future, potential barriers to adoption remain.