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Academic Resources

The ITS PCB Program works with academia to attract, equip, and prepare the ITS workforce of tomorrow. To help students, faculty, and career guidance professionals better connect with careers in ITS, the ITS PCB Program offers resources for the following topics.

Click an icon to access the resources for that topic.


ITS Academic Workshops

The ITS PCB group hosts workshops with faculty from universities, community colleges, and technical institutions, as well as public, private, and professional organization representatives. The purpose of these workshops is to identify strategies for incorporating ITS education into school curricula and to gather vital feedback for the ITS JPO to develop new tools to advance ITS learning.

Select a workshop below to view and download slide presentations.


ITS Student Competitions

ITS PCB Program and the National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE) developed a student competition, the Transportation Technology Tournament (TTT) to assist ITS students in working directly with public agencies to solve real-world transportation problems utilizing ITS and TSMO solutions. The competition allows student teams to leverage their experience, education, and ITS PCB materials to develop a solution or suite of solutions to directly address the transportation problem.

A detailed description of the TTT, its deadlines, and a list of the student teams participating is available at https://transportationops.org/transportation-technology-tournament.

Status Year Winner
Open 2023 Transportation Technology Tournament TBD
Closed 2021 Transportation Technology Tournament University of Massachusetts - Lowell
Closed 2020 Transportation Technology Tournament University of Michigan
Closed 2019 Transportation Technology Tournament University of Michigan
Closed 2018 Transportation Technology Tournament University of Texas, University of Wyoming, and University of Kansas

ITS Academic Case Studies (for Higher Education)

The ITS PCB Program offers higher education instructors learning resources for the classroom. Academic ITS Case Studies are scenario-based learning tools that can be used to expose students to real-world decisions that come with planning, deploying, and operating ITS technologies.

ITS Case Studies are organized by instructor files (PowerPoints and PDFs of Word documents) and student files. Both sets of files include a study guide, a presentation on the technology, the actual case study, and the case study debrief.

  • Instructors must register to gain access to the instructor files
  • Student files are available for anyone to view
Case Study Instructor Files Student Files Links
Adaptive Signal Control Register/Log In Introduction to ITS & Adaptive Signal Control Technologies PPT PDF HTML
Take Home Packet N/A PDF HTML
In-class Debrief PPT PDF HTML
Civil Design Considerations for ITS Implementations Register/Log In Component 1: Case Study Presentation PPT PDF
Component 2: Study Exercise Word PDF
Component 3: Study Exercise Debrief PPT PDF
Concept of Operations Development as Part of a Systems Engineering Process Case Study Register/Log In Component 1: Case Study Presentation PPT PDF
Component 2: Study Exercise Word PDF
Component 3: Study Exercise Debrief PPT PDF
National ITS Architecture Case Study Register/Log In Component 2: National ITS Architecture Exercise Word PDF HTML
Travel Time Based Performance Measures Case Study Register/Log In Travel Time-Based Performance Measures Presentation PPT PDF HTML
Travel Time-Based Performance Measures Class Problem Word PDF HTML

ITS Lesson Plans for Middle School and High School

Free ITS Lessons plans are available for Middle School and High Schools. These lesson plans target Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) programs—robotics, coding, math, electronics, and communication systems. The lessons combine activities in these areas to demonstrate Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Connected Vehicles (CV), and Automated Vehicles (AV).

Ten lesson plans are available—one level for middle school students and another for high school students—that cover the following topics:

  • Module 1: Crash Prevention
  • Module 2: Connected Vehicles
  • Module 3: School Zone Safety Audit
  • Module 4: Traffic Signal Design
  • Module 5: Sustainable and Intelligent Transportation
  • Module 6: Congestion Pricing
  • Module 7: Road Trip Board Game
  • Module 8: RADAR and LIDAR Systems in Intelligent Transportation Systems
  • Module 9: Dynamic Message Signs
  • Module 10: Intelligent Transportation Systems- Smart Work Zones

View the Lesson Plans


Talking Technology and Transportation in Education (T3e) Webinars

The T3e webinars focus on academic research and provide universities and institutions an opportunity to showcase specific initiatives and study areas. This unique webinar series provides professors and students an opportunity to share research findings, students to hone their presentation skills, and industry practitioners and policy-makers to learn about academic findings.

T3e webinars are based on University-led research. This material is not necessarily based upon work supported by the USDOT. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in these publications are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USDOT. USDOT does not endorse products or manufacturers.

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For inquiries regarding the ITS PCB Program, please contact the USDOT Point of Contact below.
J.D. Schneeberger
Program Manager, Knowledge and Technology Transfer
John.Schneeberger@dot.gov

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