Model Education Curricula and Toolkit for the Transportation of Hazardous Materials (2013)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS CONCLUSIONS This research project produced a set of hazardous materials education curricula materials that are useful in a wide variety of educational settings. Peer review of the material was an essential element of achieving this result. The topics cover most of what educators and industry executives desire for educating current and future hazmat transportation employees. That being said, it is clear that resource constraints did not allow producing a final set of course materials that are as polished and vetted as other recent Cooperative Research Program curricula efforts, such Road Safety 101, NCHRP Report 667, or similar commercial products. The main shortcomings are complete slide notes, instructor and student guides, exercises, and proficiency tests. Hence, the resulting product is more correctly labeled a “toolkit for hazardous materials transportation education.” There also was not time for full semester-length trial offerings of the content, which would have the benefit of providing in-use feedback for a final round of curricula material improvement. Deployment and ongoing support of the hazmat transportation education toolkit emerged as a challenge, but one in which there is considerable interest among those who have seen the developed material. The recommendations offered below principally address the issues of toolkit deployment and enhancement. RECOMMENDATIONS The following recommendations for further effort would considerably enhance the prospects for implementation of the hazmat transportation model curricula. • Conduct market analysis of prospective adopters. • Promote curricula to potential users. • Organize a hazmat transportation education working group to facilitate curricula adoption and evolution, track curricula usage, and serve as the secretariat for a stated period. A similar model was followed by the Federal Highway Administration and TRB in supporting development of the Distance Learning Graduate Certificate Program in Transportation that is currently administered by the USDOT Regional University Transportation Centers. • Provide additional supporting materials for each module, such as student guide, exercises, examinations, etc. • Support initial academic offerings at one or more universities. 60

• Produce and offer one or more executive education sessions. The products of this research initiative will gradually become outdated and stale, absent an entity to serve as the “owner” of the curricula. The owner would provide leadership and technical support to update the toolkit content, facilitate course offerings, attract students, provide ongoing user support, and promote the success of the products. Identifying and perhaps funding someone to fill this “owner” role is the single largest obstacle to successful deployment. 61