The Geometric Design Training Series consists of 34 lessons that are currently distributed on CD ROM. These highly interactive lessons were created to teach the complexities of geometric design. They are designed so that difficult concepts can be grasped easily and quickly by civil engineers, highway technicians, transportation planners and new designers. In addition this program can be used to teach people who are new to design, or are from other functional groups who work in design only temporarily. They can be used by Federal, State, Local Roads, Contractors/Consultants or anyone who needs a refresher course on a specific design topic. These lessons teach design standards and how they interacts, the lessons also help explain the 'why' behind design.

This project will convert the lessons from Metric to English units and rebuild them to take advantage of current streaming technology so that they can be accessed on the internet. The advantage to having this series on the internet is that the lessons will be accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from anywhere. Also, it adds the ability to update the lessons so that they are always current without having to redistribute new versions.

English conversion of the lessons will be a very large undertaking. Each lesson has several elements that will need to be redone, and the use of focus groups will be essential to keeping the series accurate during the conversion. The conversion of the video portion of the lesson includes rewriting the script with English examples, rebuilding all effected graphics, re-shooting where necessary, re-narration and re-editing. The Exercises and Example portion of the lessons will need to be rewritten; English scenarios will need to be generated and appropriate documents created for them. The Glossary, Prelesson Assessments, Lesson Assessment and Final Assessments and all of the interactions will need to be rewritten and recreated. These elements will then need to be reprogrammed and combined into the final lesson. This process would need to be done for each of the 34 lessons. We are seeking a total of $1,800,000 in pooled funds to convert the series over a 4-year period. Our target is to have 25 agencies participation at $18,000 per year for 4 years yielding $1,800,000. A full commitment of the 4 years is required. We will house the lessons on a Mn/DOT server during the development of the series. As individual lessons are completed they will be posted and can be downloaded to each State's local servers for access. For a sample of what the web-based conversion would look like go to the web site below: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/fhwageometrics/wbl

Our target is to have 25 agencies participation at $18,000 per year for 4 years yielding $1,800,000. A full commitment of the 4 years is required.