EDUCATOR KIT DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

To satisfy the growing demand of the optoelectronics industry for skilled engineers, scientists, and technical staff, numerous colleges and universities world-wide have introduced courses in optoelectronics and optical communications at graduate and post graduate level. Such courses require the support of laboratory based programmes to enable the students to acquire practical familiarity with optoelectronics principles, components and systems.

Despite the obvious need, very little dedicated hardware for optoelectronics teaching laboratories is commercially available. What is available tends to simply demonstrate some features of the technology (and in most cases these are limited to very basic features) rather than enabling students to investigate important physical principles or key technical issues. In many instances the general approach taken within academic institutions, and also by most commercial suppliers, is to design student experiments around existing optoelectronic hardware, probably originally conceived for the research or industrial markets. The result of this approach is that the educational objectives and issues addressed in the ensuing laboratory experiments are dictated by the available equipment. Often, therefore, the demonstration or investigation of certain key technical issues and principles are excluded, implying that the desired educational objectives are not realised.

OptoSci recognise that it is essential to have a fully integrated approach to the design of laboratory based photonics education packages, including: the design of dedicated hardware, experimental procedures, exercises and manuals. Therefore to ensure high quality educational products, OptoSci, in close collaboration with senior academic staff at Strathclyde and Heriot-Watt Universities, develop their kits in accordance with the following strict design philosophy:

  1. Define the educational objectives in terms of the physical principles, key technical features, design issues and performance characteristics which must be addressed to complement the associated lecture course.
  2. Define and design the experiments to realise these objectives.
  3. Design the dedicated (custom) hardware to enable the proposed experimental investigation.
  4. Formulate the experimental procedure and instruction manuals to guide the tutor and the students through the investigation and results analysis (in most cases more open ended investigations may also be formulated with minimal guidance given to the students).
  5. Prepare the associated lecture notes, and formulate tutorial exercises and case studies to relate the results to real world devices and systems.

This innovative approach ensures: that all of the educational objectives are realised; that the key technical issues are addressed; and that each complete package can be offered for a price which is realistic within academic budgets.