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Volume 3,Issue 8

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26 August 2025

Innovating Curriculum Systems for Railway Intelligence: Construction and Practice of the AITL Layered Model

Shengyong Yao1,2 Chen Zhao1,2 Yuhao Dong1,2 Lijuan Liu1,2 Lin Zhou3*
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1 School of Transportation, Shijiazhuang Tiedao University, Shijiazhuang 050043, Hebei, China
2 Hebei Key Laboratory of Transportation Safety and Control, Shijiazhuang 050043, Hebei, China
3 Department of Information Engineering, Beijing Polytechnic University, Beijing 100176, China
CEF 2025 , 3(7), 75–84; https://doi.org/10.18063/CEF.v3i7.800
© 2025 by the Author. Licensee Whioce Publishing, Singapore. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), traffic engineering is undergoing a critical transformation that requires restructuring both its knowledge framework and talent cultivation model. Traditional railway-related curricula struggle to address highly complex and real-time problems such as transportation organization, train control, and capacity prediction, resulting in fragmented competencies, outdated modules, and misalignment between instructional content and operational needs. As a data-intensive and safety-critical subsystem, modern railway operations increasingly rely on AI for train control, dispatch scheduling, operational optimization, and digital infrastructure management, calling for systematic curriculum reform. In response, this study examines global teaching practices and technological trends and proposes the AITL Layered Curriculum Model, a three-stage competency pathway encompassing technology internalization, scenario transfer, and intelligent creation. The model establishes an integrated instructional content chain, a task-driven mechanism, and an AI-enabled experimental platform embedded in representative railway scenarios. Multi-scenario virtual teaching experiments verify that the AITL model effectively mitigates fragmented curriculum organization, insufficient task embedding, and unclear competency progression, providing a systematic, transferable, and evaluable framework that aligns with the intelligence-oriented transformation of railway traffic engineering and offers broader applicability to transportation education.

Keywords
Artificial intelligence
AITL layered curriculum model
Railway systems
Traffic engineering
Curriculum reform
Funding
2023 Industry–Academia Collaborative Education Program: Research on Collaborative School–Enterprise Training Models for AI-Oriented Composite Talents in Transportation and Environmental Engineering (Project No.: 2409251732)
References

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[3] Yang Y, Huang H, Chen X, et al., 2025, AI-Enabled Curriculum System Construction and Instructional Design Reform for Traffic Engineering. Journal of Traffic Engineering, 25(06): 106–112.

[4] Xi J, 2019, Congratulatory Letter to the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education. Chinese Journal of Health Information Management, 16(03): 247.

[5] The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, The State Council, 2019, China Education Modernization 2035, visited on June 15, 2025, https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2019-02/23/content_5367987.htm.

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[9] Rong Y, Wang X, Li F, et al., 2024, Reform and Exploration of Application-Oriented Talent Cultivation Models for Transportation Under the Background of Intelligent Connectivity. Education Informatization Forum, 12: 66–68.

[10] Chen L, Tong F, Wang J, et al., 2025, Exploring Reform Pathways for Virtual Simulation Experiment Teaching in Railway Engineering Programs. Journal of Traffic Engineering, 25(03): 94–98.

[11] Xing L, Wu W, Liu W, et al., 2023, Exploring Curriculum Reform Methods for Transportation Engineering Disciplines Oriented Toward Smart Transportation. Innovation and Entrepreneurship Theory Research and Practice, 6(18): 35–38, 84.

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