Optics can be a challenging subject for students that are not pursuing a science major. A well-organized lab exercise aids students in better understanding content and provides more opportunities to reaffirm the knowledge they obtained through lecture. To orchestrate a successful lab activity it is vital to account for the diversity of knowledge and experience; as such, extra measures have to be taken to ensure every student learns. Integrating this mindset, we created an “Optics and Telescope” lab activity that encompasses strengthening pedagogy. We felt that our previous “Optics and Telescope” activity was not meeting the needs of our students due to the equipment it used and the format of the activity itself. To determine whether our new lab exercise was successful, we created an experiment that tested the previous lab format versus our newly developed format.
The new lab activity was assembled by using PASCO optical benches and equipment...
