¶ … Longitudinal evaluation of a GIS laboratory in a transportation engineering course," Bham, Cernusca, Luna and Manepalli look at the effectiveness of a geographic information system-based tutorial in the teaching of transportation engineering. The authors studied students who were given this form of tutorial in conjunction with other learning techniques. They found that the students who received this tutorial performed better than those who did not. The paper serves to build the body of evidence with respect to GIS as a teaching technique for this subject. The authors sought to show that this technique is effective, and they accomplished that. The study was significantly rigorous to make a reasonable contribution to this field of study. The article initially introduces the problem. They noted that "previous studies reveal that ... entry-level engineers lack significant exposure to transportation engineering methodologies" despite having hourly requirements for study in transportation-related courses in civil engineering programs (Bham et al., p.258). The use of geographic information systems in tutorials is one of the means by which educators in the field have sought to overcome this knowledge gap among entry-level engineers, and thereby raise the quality of education in this subject. GIS had received the lowest amount of coverage among education methodologies that were analyzed in another survey, which lead to the hypothesis that increasing the usage of GIS might contribute to resolving this knowledge gap. In particular, GIS would help civil engineering education become more focused on market needs (Bham, et al., p.258).

Working with this basic understanding of the problem, the authors developed a GIS laboratory that could be used to assist civil engineering students learn more about transportation engineering. The software was a "self-paced multimedia tutorial that introduced the steps associated with the use of ArcGIS for each stage of ... " eight different tasks (Bham et al., p. 259). The software was based on a set of highway crash data. Working with...

The first is whether or not this GIS laboratory is an effect means to help civil engineering students learn about traffic safety, the second is whether it produces a better learning experience and the third is whether students perceive it to be better (Bham et al., p.259). Arguably, only the first genuinely matters -- outcomes-based evidence is superior when analyzing whether the software improves engineering education. However, there is good reason for the authors to include the other two research questions as well, as the responses from instructors and students could help to develop improvements to the software going forward. In particular, if the results to the first research question were not positive, it would be important to know why. So the last two research questions deliver valuable feedback to the makers of the GIS tutorial.
The authors then outlined the research methodology. The project was divided into multiple phases. In the first phase, the GIS was implemented in 2009 on a limited basis. There were subsequent phases where adjustments were made to the original methodology. One of the objectives of the different phases was to test if different means of delivering the software impacted on the results. The authors determined that there was a significant effect from using the software. The authors set out a control group as well, but the control group was merely a group that did not have a 20 minute lecture before using the laboratory. All groups use the GIS lab. Thus, this experiment does not appear to effectively test what the authors say it tests -- there is no control group recorded that did not use the lab. The study therefore tests the 20 minute instructional prior to the lab at the independent variable, not the lab itself. Nevertheless, the researchers found that the non-control group outperformed the control group, even when accounting for GPA and other factors. The different phases were conducted at course levels spanning all four undergraduate years, and the findings held…