Use Case
Simulators in the Classroom
Chad Forry, Safety Education teacher and Behind-the-Wheel teacher at Northeastern High School, has used desktop class driving simulators from Safety Simulators in his classroom for the past five years as a supplement to the safety education curriculum that every tenth grade student at Northeastern is required to take.
Chad takes advantage of the automatic tracking of student performance that each of his two simulators affords. The automatic tracking serves Chad in two major ways. The first ensures that students have to take their simulated driving seriously. It’s absolutely not a game where purposefully injuring pedestrians, leaving the roadway, or purposely causing an accident with the car is rewarded. In fact, the simulator does not allow anything graphic to be seen if a student does purposefully hit another person: the car simply goes through the person in a nonviolent way and registers that a person was injured or killed in the driving report at the end of a session. Because every action is tracked for each student who uses the simulator, students cannot go for a joyride since it will show-up automatically in their individual driving log.
Chad has a list of lessons and skills that each student is required to complete satisfactorily. He schedules each student with time to use the simulators during his nine week safety education course. There’s enough time throughout the course for all of his students to get simulator time, but it’s a tight schedule.
“I’m currently budgeting for a third simulator to make rotation time for each student a little easier to manage. There’s enough time to get every student in every class simulator time, but because some students need a little more time to get all of their skills done, it’s sometimes a little challenging to find them the additional time slots that they need.”--Chad Forry
In addition to teaching the student required safety education course at Northeastern, Chad also teaches a CDL elective course. Chad uses his desktop simulators to help train his students to drive 18-wheel trucks and school buses (PA Class A and Class B vehicles) with skills including shifting gears, splitting between high and low gears, backing, straight line backing, offset backing, maintaining your lane, backing into a garage/depot, taking wide turns, and practicing for the CDL skills test. Chad has also had students with an interest in volunteer firefighting use the simulators to practice maneuvering a fire truck.
“The trucking industry, and for that matter, the school bus industry too; they’re having a hard time filling driving positions. The amount of support that I’ve received from the industry; both from individual trucking companies as well as organizations like the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association has been phenomenal.”--Chad Forry
Chad’s course provides CDL training to interested students at Northeastern. While they’re not old enough to obtain their actual CDL, they leave the course with the skills needed to help pass their CDL exam.
After starting the CDL program, several transportation companies took notice, including the company contracted for Northeastern’s student transportation service: F&S Transportation. After seeing the simulators for the first time, F&S Transportation’s instructor coordinator realized they were a tool that they could use to reduce the cost of training their new drivers.
“It takes a lot of fuel to take brand new drivers out in the field for training. Using our simulator lets us save on those fuel costs. It also eliminates the risk of taking an approximately $100,000 bus out on the road with an inexperienced driver.”--Kim Sabold, Instructor Coordinator, F&S Transportation
Both Chad and Kim were able to fund their simulator purchases through grants and budgeting.
Chad takes advantage of the automatic tracking of student performance that each of his two simulators affords. The automatic tracking serves Chad in two major ways. The first ensures that students have to take their simulated driving seriously. It’s absolutely not a game where purposefully injuring pedestrians, leaving the roadway, or purposely causing an accident with the car is rewarded. In fact, the simulator does not allow anything graphic to be seen if a student does purposefully hit another person: the car simply goes through the person in a nonviolent way and registers that a person was injured or killed in the driving report at the end of a session. Because every action is tracked for each student who uses the simulator, students cannot go for a joyride since it will show-up automatically in their individual driving log.
Chad has a list of lessons and skills that each student is required to complete satisfactorily. He schedules each student with time to use the simulators during his nine week safety education course. There’s enough time throughout the course for all of his students to get simulator time, but it’s a tight schedule.
“I’m currently budgeting for a third simulator to make rotation time for each student a little easier to manage. There’s enough time to get every student in every class simulator time, but because some students need a little more time to get all of their skills done, it’s sometimes a little challenging to find them the additional time slots that they need.”--Chad Forry
In addition to teaching the student required safety education course at Northeastern, Chad also teaches a CDL elective course. Chad uses his desktop simulators to help train his students to drive 18-wheel trucks and school buses (PA Class A and Class B vehicles) with skills including shifting gears, splitting between high and low gears, backing, straight line backing, offset backing, maintaining your lane, backing into a garage/depot, taking wide turns, and practicing for the CDL skills test. Chad has also had students with an interest in volunteer firefighting use the simulators to practice maneuvering a fire truck.
“The trucking industry, and for that matter, the school bus industry too; they’re having a hard time filling driving positions. The amount of support that I’ve received from the industry; both from individual trucking companies as well as organizations like the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association has been phenomenal.”--Chad Forry
Chad’s course provides CDL training to interested students at Northeastern. While they’re not old enough to obtain their actual CDL, they leave the course with the skills needed to help pass their CDL exam.
After starting the CDL program, several transportation companies took notice, including the company contracted for Northeastern’s student transportation service: F&S Transportation. After seeing the simulators for the first time, F&S Transportation’s instructor coordinator realized they were a tool that they could use to reduce the cost of training their new drivers.
“It takes a lot of fuel to take brand new drivers out in the field for training. Using our simulator lets us save on those fuel costs. It also eliminates the risk of taking an approximately $100,000 bus out on the road with an inexperienced driver.”--Kim Sabold, Instructor Coordinator, F&S Transportation
Both Chad and Kim were able to fund their simulator purchases through grants and budgeting.
