Problem-based learning in optical engineering studies

Nowadays, the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is one of the most prospective educational technologies. PBL is based on evaluation of learning outcomes of a student, both professional and personal, instead of traditional evaluation of theoretical knowledge and selective practical skills. Such an approach requires changes in the curricula development. There should be introduced projects (cases) imitating real tasks from the professional life. These cases should include a problem summary with necessary theoretic description, charts, graphs, information sources etc, task to implement and evaluation indicators and criteria. Often these cases are evaluated with the assessment-center method. To motivate students for the given task they could be divided into groups and have a contest. Whilst it looks easy to implement in social, economic or teaching fields PBL is pretty complicated in engineering studies. Examples of cases in the first-cycle optical engineering studies are shown in this paper. Procedures of the PBL implementation and evaluation are described.