3.1

The structure of the practical teaching system

The practical teaching system for the bachelor program Optoelectronic Information Science and Engineering mainly consists of five levels (see Figure 1), namely: 1, professional cognitive practice; 2, basic experiments on optoelectronic; 3, design practice on optoelectronic system (course design); 4, capacity promotion program (comprehensive research practice); 5, graduation project:

Figure 1.

Practical teaching system architecture..

The first level professional cognitive practice aims to arouse students’ learning interest, enhance their sense of identity to the optoelectronics, and help them to build the association among optoelectronic profession, systems and products. The second level basic experiments on optoelectronics have been inherited for decades, the contents of the experiments closely relates to the theoretical courses, which can enable students to understand the relation between theory and practice as well as to grasp basic experimental techniques, analytical methods and operational skills. The third level professional course design aims to strengthen students’ analysis and design capabilities on professional optoelectronic system and to enhance their integration and application of knowledge. The fourth level capacity promotion program is a long-term program, within which every undergraduate should be involved in both curricular and extracurricular projects to strengthen their innovative capacity throughout three and a half academic years. The last level is the graduation project. Students are required to accomplish a project independently by following a process of concept promotion, design, implementation and evaluation, and to use research methods that are relevant to the optoelectronics domain. This graduation project is also a way to examine students’ learning outcomes at the end of their bachelor program.

3.2

Practical teaching and capacity cultivation s

The undergraduates in our faculty are expected to graduate with solid theoretical knowledge base on optoelectronics, with enough capacity on diagnosing engineering systems, and with high potential to take advantage of their knowledge and capacity in developing innovative designs and responding to the technological, social and economic development and changes [1]. To achieving these goals, the objectives to be accomplished by practical teaching are: students grasp basics skills on optoelectronics, understand the relationship between theoretical concepts and practical situation, and can use what they have learnt in solving practical problems. The practical teaching plan was designed by taking students’ phased capacity requirements into consideration (see Figure 2). Different levels of practical tasks were set to cultivate their capacity and skills gradually.

Figure 2.

The relationship between the design of practical teaching and the capacity requirements

Figure 3.

The content of the capacity promotion program

4.1

Building the capacity promotion program aiming at cultivating the innovative capacity for every student

Decades of practice on practical teaching and experience from both international and domestic indicated that extracurricular scientific research programs can benefit bachelor students with scientific awareness, team spirit, research ability and integrative competence. The extracurricular research programs are also of important significance in cultivating students’ independent thinking and working competence [2]. However, the previous extracurricular research programs, or capacity promotion programs, are only available for excellent students, talent students or specially selected students. As a national pilot institute of the educational reform on practical teaching, every undergraduate that major in Optoelectronic Information Science and Engineering in our faculty can participate in this kind of extracurricular program.

Under the guidance of the principle “available for every undergraduate”, the capacity promotion program in our faculty is both universal and flexible. More choices are provided for students to meet their individual needs and different levels of ability. Through the program, every student will experience the whole process of a scientific research through finishing a project, summarizing the outcome of the project and writing research papers about the project.

The evaluation of students’ performance on this capacity promotion program is from two aspects: the research process and the research outcome. The main research processes refer to a student’s participation in the research project of his/her supervisor, in the innovative projects for undergraduates, in academic competitions and in extracurricular and curricular projects, etc. The research outcome denotes the academic papers.

As this capacity promotion program is characterized by its diversification and fragmentation, the difficulties of its implementation lie in the supervision and evaluation of the process and quality. To account for this, the portfolio assessment is introduced as a management tool to manage and control the whole process [3].

This capacity promotion program can not only help to improve students’ integrative competence but also can help students to gradually form the rigorous style and the moral character on academic research.

4.2

Construction of multiple and progressive teaching projects

4.2.2

Progressive courses based on projects

The project-based practical teaching program is implemented continuously and progressively to the undergraduates. Take the teaching program on monocular as an example, as shown in Figure 4, in the first academic year, students can learn how to use a monocular and how to evaluate the using effects from the professional cognitive practice. In the second academic year, students will participate in some experiments on applied optics, within which they have to measure the optical parameters of the monocular. During the experimental process, their understanding about the optical parameters can be improved. Apart from the optical experiments, they are also required to finish a course design project on designing a monocular with Zmax optical software in this year. In the third academic year, students will be involved in the optical-physics experiments on the transfer function, and learn the transfer function of wave aberration. They have to evaluate the quality of a monocular by using this function. In the last academic year, students will participate in the modern optical experiment. Monocular is used in Phase-shifting interferometry as laser beam extender in the experiment, and students are asked to evaluate their effect on the measurement results.

Figure 4.

The content of the monocular program.

Figure 5.

The progressive experiments concerning the Mach-Zehnder interferometer.

4.3

Construct professional, integrative practice in course design

After students are equipped with enough professional knowledge and basic skills, they can practice what they have learnt in some course design projects, such as optical fiber communication system course design, photoelectric system course design, optoelectronic device course design and laser device course design.

Taking the photoelectric system course design as an example, the practical devices included in this project are: photoelectric pulse tester, traffic light controller, optoelectronic intelligent tracking car, photoelectric elevator controller etc. Students need to conduct both theoretical and simulated analysis, and to decompose and analyze the technical index needs under the guidance of the teacher. Students are also asked to comprehensively use the optical, the machine, the electricity and cultivation in finishing the course design.

4.4

Converting the disciplinary development into high-quality teaching resource for undergraduates in time