An introductory course on automotive lighting

A course has been developed for students interested to learn practical design procedures for automotive lighting applications. The course covers topics such as imaging and non-imaging optics, LED lighting, plastic optics, plastic part design, optical manufacturing, injection molding, optical tolerancing, computer aided lighting and computer aided design, and economical aspects of product development. The students work through several projects on rear lighting and forward lighting. The present paper summarizes the pedagogy in optics education in the second offering of the course, inspired by the experiences from the first offering, the feedback from students, and the feedback from industry. Challenges faced during teaching the course, both technical and pedagogical, are discussed.