Introduction

The paper is dedicated to the teaching of optics in the social aspects and organizational challenges within a dual engineering university program. Students in those dual studies are in double pressure. They “are integrated not only in their university program, but also in an extremely demanding professional environment.“¹ That means that those young students which come normally directly after their graduartion into the dual university programs are exposed to a new environment full of stress and an unknown athmosphere. These circumstances are hard to handle for the lecturers.

Additionally to the stressed students it is also hard to handle with the employers of the students for the university. They demand high quality and highly qualified degree holders after the completion of the university course. The employers sometimes want to change some contents of subjects or need to substract sometimes students from a lecture. It is also obligatory that the students need to finish a whole semester with the associated subjects and exams within three months.

In our case we will analyze young students and their studies of electrical engineering with the specialization of train control systems at the bbw Hochschule² with the focus on optics courses. The paper is a follow-up on a formerly written paper about optics and optronics in university courses for officers of the federal armed forces.¹ There are certain paralles between the officers at the military university and dual students. The both of them are studying under circumstances where they are guided from a higher instance (authorized officer or employer) and need to work parallel to their studies.

Dual studies in Germany

The recruiting of young and qualified engineers with special knowledge in e.g. special railway components is difficult. Companies need to train their new colleagues in those special fields and integrate them into the departments. This process is expensive and time-consuming. To solve that issue some companies cooperate with different universities to offer dual university programs. Students in dual university programs are employed by the company that has chosen to assume the student. They are working and studying in three month circles which are self contained in their educational aspect. For example the student begins with his first university stage. In those three months he needs to be teached the whole knowledge of a semester and to pass the examinations.

After the university stage there follows the company stage where the student is intoduced to the department and the projects where he can support the other employees. In those stages the student is about to get his first work experience and has to write a report about his practices. That report is part of an exam at the university. After completing six university stages and five working stages the student has to write his bachelor thesis and is after passing that exam a degree holder that can work full-time for his company. Figure 1 shows the timeline of a dual engineering university program.

Figure 1.

Timeline of a dual engineering university program. University part is on the left side, company part is on the right side.

Curriculum

For each field of study and specialization there are different courses to teach. In this paper is the dual study of electrical engineering with specialization train control systems at the bbw Hochschule the central theme. Table 1 gives a review about all subjects that are part of the dual university course. Students have to complete them and can’t choose other subjects like in normal university courses.

Table 1.

Subjects of the dual university course in electrical engineering with specialization train control systems at the bbw Hochschule

The first four semesters are part of the basics studies. In this case electrical engineering. Most of the subjects are also part of a communicational engineering university course. The fifth and the sixth semesters contain the subjects of the specialization. After three months of each semester are following three months in the company. In this time the students are fully aviable for their employer but they have to write a report about a self-chosen topic in which they analyze how any subject they’ve already had fits into their working tasks.

In the fourth semester the subject optics is teached. The most earlier subjects lead to a better expertise that is helpful to understand and get the idea behind some optics concepts like the laws of reflection that has been teached in transmission technology or some basic principles that have been told in physics. Optics is fundamental for the comprehension of being an engineer and is the junction of many other subjects. For a student it is much easier to understand the law of reflection when it is shown with light or the prinicple of interference.

Problems and challenges

This section will outline an overview of the challenges with dual programs but most of them are also relevant for common degree programs. The most students have graduated from their highschools and aged between 18-22 years. They applied to their dual study a year before it starts and they don’t know what they will learn or what their function will be. Those young people need to sign a contract that binds them to the employer for 3 years of their study and in common cases also for a few years afterwards. This may sound attractive and is a safe way for their career entry but they don’t even know what is coming next and what they will have to do.

The optics course as multidisciplinary project

Obviously an electrical engineering course is predestinated for the integration of an optics course. In terms of railway and transport technology, motivation is found in optical traffic signalling technology as well as in optical transmission. As such, these subjects could be part of transmission/communication technology and train control systems according to table 1. As a separate module in the 4th semester, such a course offers the opportunity to combine main outcomes of several important modules found in earlier semesters, from material science over higher math, electrical engineering, physics, mechanical design, up to electromagnetic field and wave theory, which are part of RF/high frequency technology, intentionally held in parallel for maximum synergy.

Due to the complexity of the subject, the matter is imparted iteratively with increasing degree of difficulty, starting with fractions from material science, basic geometrical optics and human perception, leading to wave problems, opto-electronics, applied camera systems and finally the design of complex multilens systems. More than 50 percent of the lessons are dedicated to practical work in the lab. The lab experiments are used to define tasks for team based projects, resulting in presentations and written scientific/technical report. The latter substitute a written theoretical exam.

These demanding sessions usually result in an altered perception of subject which were found useless only one semester before, see perception table 2. The substitution of written exams by extended technical reports reduces the susceptibility for so called bulimic learning* but - instead - demands an intense look into the several subjects.

As a result, in subsequent modules like Computer Aided Engineering, a selection of additional topics for student projects - like digital image processing or optical communication - might be chosen from. Further, these subjects are to be found again in some of the student’s bachelor theses, which usually happens when the perception of the requirements of their departments finally meet the reality of the university courses.

Smart phone use as a challenge

Although the present paper should be focussed on optics education, it seems appropriate to give some remarks on the use of smartphone technology in general educational situations. Among teachers and lecturers certain observations on the change of student behaviour and learning attitude is discussed. On one hand, there is the exploding tendency of collecting information without assimilation. We find typical statements in table 3 and under lecturers perception, when lecture notes are demanded to avoid the traditional manual notes. This tendency is obviously linked to a substitution of true personal insight by the sensation of successfully finding an answer - the words of the answer - by searching the internet as fast as possible.

As a result, the use of real textbooks is not trained and therefore partially unknown as a form of research and learning. By the end of the first decade of the new century internet research was mainly dependent on the use of a PC, its typical size and supply requirements. The advent of the second decade, already starting with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the rollout of 4G technology in 2009³ a full-fledged internet use became part of the everyday situation, and naturally of the typical education situation. Around this time a real time peer-to-peer communication instead of the limited short message became fashionable and a partial substitute for a real social environment.

A graphical timeline could easily illustrate, that in parallel a generation of people, grown up completely in the age of internet and mobile communication devices, would enter the university scene. In 2018 the typical young student does not have any experience of a world without mobile devices and internet. Today’s typical classroom situation involves the permanent smartphone usage of a high percentage of the students, mainly for communication purposes out of the context of the lesson, but also for information retrieval, often to proof what was just said by the lecturer, often accompanied by showing and discussing a clear preference for unreliable sources. Another observation is the sudden switch from concentration and attention to a apparent relaxation phase with intense phone use.

There are certain cues that behavioural changes, unhappiness and depression are connected to smartphone use.⁴ Indeed, there seems to be an increasing number of depression related cases, which should be subject to further investigation on its own.

Solutions like the ban of smartphones by decree demand control schemes, which in principle would require measurement technology in the class room. A less restrictive solution is described in,⁵ where smart phone breaks are suggested.

Conclusion and outlook

It is hard to handle with students that are under double pressure from their employer and the university courses and exams. They are having always the upper hand because they can charge problems directly to their employer who pays the university to teach the students. Because of that, the lecturers need to fulfill nearly every wish of the students e.g. uploading lecture notes early or precising the contens of exams. After the students have written their exams they are going for three months to work for their employers and have nothing much to do with their studies. In this time they are doing practice work and forget some of their learning matter.

Under these circumstances it is hard to educate young people to capable academics. It is necessary to develop new and alternative ideas to teach the students the subjects, even if they are not fully interested in that matter. The exams need to be compact enough that every student can pass them. That means, that the students are learning intensive for the exams but forget everything they’ve learned after they’ve finished them.

To avoid behavior pattern like that there are a few possibilities. One of them is to let the students write papers as substitute for the examinations. For writing a paper they need to grapple themselves in depth with the chosen topic. They will learn sustainable and eventually they will find some interest within the topic and will occupy themselves with more in-depth information. The topics for the papers can be chosen together with the employer so the students see some sense in the subject which causes them to stay motivated.

Maybe universities should think about their conventional methods of instruction and change the conventional way of teaching content to an unconventional type of university course. They need not only to overthink their teaching aids e.g. the exchange of blackboards with smart boards but also about the way of introducing young people to academical degrees. The young people are not only interested in earning money and having a safe working place, they are interested in individual fulfilment and exploring the world. To stay in time for young people who want to reach academical qualifications the universities need to fit better into the alternative and modern concepts of the new generations.

All in all the universities need to work together more closely with the employers to keep the students motivated and interested in working for the companies. The lecturers need to understand why the young generations are so easily distracted by their phones and need to adjust their methods of teaching complicated topics to the students. But also the students have to be told that it can’t always be easy to study and learn for the examinations. Maybe all sides need to have more appreciation for each other and to understand that the conventional methods of instruction won’t always work within an unconventional system.