1.

INTRODUCTION

Cultivating technology engineers who adapt to the needs of national economic construction not only is the national strong demands to the college graduates in recent years, but also is the market economy demands for engineering talent[1,2]. Compared with developed countries, there is a significant gap in the level of practical teaching in China, especially in engineering practice teaching [3]. The urgent task for our higher engineering education is training Chinese engineers with international standards as soon as possible. However there are many problems in the engineering practice of education in our country, such as issues about emphasis on theory while take little account of practice, thinking highly of individual ability on academics while ignoring the spirit of teamwork, paying much attention to knowledge learning while despising the development of innovation.

Aiming at the phenomena such as low learning enthusiasm, low attendance and poor teaching effect for the senior students, we will make the teaching mode reform design and practice exploring based on the professional course of optical fiber technology, hoping to improve the students’ interest in learning, increase their abilities to integrate theory with practice, cultivate their scientific innovation abilities[4,5], which also is an important way to implement the concept of CDIO[6]. In view of this, this paper makes a preliminary exploration and research on the reform and practice of the teaching mode for the professional course of optical fiber sensing technology.

2.

THE OBJECTIVE OF THE CURRICULUM REFORM

Optical fiber sensing technology is a course with strong comprehensiveness, applicability, and practicality. It integrates the knowledge involving optics, mechanical, electronic, computer and other aspects, and also closely relates to production, scientific research practice. According to the characteristics of optical fiber sensing technology, such as, the course covers a wide range and every chapter is independent from others; the course content is much complex for students to find the emphasis and laws, they don’t know what should be grasped and how to master it; owing to their insufficient practical knowledge and experience, it is difficult for students to understand well this course. In view of this, on the basis of teaching basic theoretical knowledge, teachers may explain the content of every chapter by showing the basic principle, measuring circuit, application examples of different kinds of sensors.

3.

THE SPECIFIC TEACHING CONTENT REFORM

Based on the principle of “theory as the foundation, focusing on application and highlighting on practice”, the content of the course is determined by the demand and development of optical fiber sensing technology, focusing on the introduction of the latest scientific research achievements and the development trend of the frontier, highlighting the practicality and practicality. The course contents are organized as follows:

In order to adapt to the new teaching content, it will change the original teaching order:

Fig. 1

The latest research of distributed optical fiber sensing

Fig.2

Teaching and Observation in Laboratory

Fig.3

The role exchange teaching

Through the adjustment of the curriculum content, the old and new content contrast is as follows:

New: 14 credit hours for basic theories and principles, 4 credit hours for observation learning, 4 credit hours for experimental teaching, 2 credit hours for role exchange teaching and 4 weeks for case practical teaching (combined with professional comprehensive training, as shows in Fig.4.).

Fig.4

The professional comprehensive training

Old: 20 credit hours for basic theories and principles and 4 credit hours for experimental teaching.

Specific details of the adjustment is shown in Table 1, and the reference materials are “optical fiber communications and sensing technology,” edited by Professor Weihong Bi, projected materials for electronic information and electrical discipline, published by Electronic Industry Press.

Table 1:

Contrast in content and credit hours a between he old and the new one

4.

TEACHING METHOD

In teaching, in order to make the students master the knowledge easily and improve their comprehensive design and practice ability extend the classroom teaching to the actual development and design process. According to the characteristics of the course, teaching is by the following ways:

1) In the aspect of common teaching in classroom, we should break the original single injection teaching method, adopt flexible and various heuristic teaching methods, pay attention to the interaction between teachers and students and the cultivation of students’ practical ability. The basic content is given by the teacher, the actual case is done based on teacher-student interaction, and the specific design is hands-on by students. From the operational level of teaching, it will completely subvert the original teaching methods, and form a new teaching model.

2) Using multimedia teaching method, make network resources as a useful complement to classroom teaching. Multimedia teaching can achieve the effects as following: ① It can integrate sound, light, shape, color, motion, etc. during explaining, and can greatly stimulate students’ interest in learning. ② By multimedia animation demonstration, it leads teaching more intuitive and interactive, and greatly accelerate the speed of teaching.

3) Combine classroom teaching with practice teaching: It can be divided into 4 levels: classroom teaching, observation learning, comprehensive design and experimental teaching. Draw inferences about other cases from one instance to strengthen their practical ability.

5.

IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW TEACHING METHODS

The new teaching mode is demonstrated by the group of curriculum reform, and is implemented according to the plan after being approved by the leaders of college and the office of academic affairs, the specific implementation process is as following:

The first stage is about the basic theory of optical fiber sensing technology teaching, mainly to study the basic theory of optical fiber sensing technology and modulation & demodulation technology, to enable students master the basic theoretical knowledge;

The second stage is the introduction of the basic working principle of the common optical fiber sensor, using discussion method, by teacher-student interaction to changed the situation of monodrama played only by the teacher in the past and then to make students actively exploring instead of passively accepting knowledge intonation. In order to organize the content of discussion, teachers should design the outline for discussing before class according to the content designed by students, and guide the discussion process.

The third stage is the observation learning stage, firstly the teacher raises some questions, then students preview and access to relevant knowledge, finally they visit the site with questions, thus increase their perceptual knowledge. After they understand the actual operation methods, the teacher can carry on the rational analysis and summary, explain the key points, difficulties, and solve the problem.

In the fourth stage of practice teaching, on the basis of the above three stages, we should allow full to play the students’ comprehensive innovation and practical ability, and lay a good foundation for their future developing on practical application system.

6.

CONCLUSION

Through the reform of the content, the form and the teaching method of the optical fiber sensing technology course, the students can learn and master the relevant knowledge of the optical fiber sensing technology effectively, understand the latest development of the technology, have the ability to design and debug optical fiber sensing system independently; fully manoeuvre their interest in learning from passive accepting to active learning; supply the chance of comprehensive training to them, and further improve the ability to comprehensively applicable knowledge, so that make the course of optical fiber sensing technology really play a role in cultivating students’ innovative ability and practical ability.