An Activities-Based Course in Optics for Non-technical Majors

Teaching Optics to students without a technical background lends itself particularly well to activities-based methods. Restricting the discussion to a lecture format, even if demonstrations are included, misses the opportunity to have students directly investigate something which is, quite literally, right before their eyes. At Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, we have redeveloped a course, entitled “Light & Color,” to be activities-based. Using hardware purchased specifically for this purpose, we have developed a set of student activities which are integrated into the syllabus. This course has been taught twice under the new paradigm with encouraging results. The activities developed are described and discussed and their impact on student performance is presented.