Optics education for multidisciplinary students: How to focus on the relationship between optical technology and human civilization in group discussion

Abstract

Optics and light-based technology are becoming more and more important as a cross-field of new science and engineering, and the scope of optics education should be extended. Since 2018, in Zhejiang University a new wave of general education reform has started, and our course Light-based Science and Technologies and Human Civilization has become a common core course. In the last 3 years our students mainly come from science and engineering, only a few students come from social science. From now on we will offer this course to multidisciplinary students, especially the students of politics, economics, law and arts. In this paper we present our learning organization, especially the group discussion in multidisciplinary students. The students from different specialties are divided into one group. The discussion topics are about research methodology, famous arguments in optics history, optics in daily life and imagination of the future.