Johannes Kretzschmar offering a digital photonics workshop.

Digital Teaching

Digital teaching is a vital part of our education concept.
Johannes Kretzschmar offering a digital photonics workshop.
Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

Digital Teaching at the Abbe School of Photonics

User Interface of the XRTL Adaptive Optics experiment.
User Interface of the XRTL Adaptive Optics experiment.
Screenshot: Fabian Lukas

Digitalization has finally become essential for excellence in future academic education, research and collaboration! Physical mobility can already be replaced by intelligent mobility – a mixture of physical and digital presence. At our school, a digital teaching team works at the frontier of this vision. Strong support and synergies are created by our collaboration with the excellent equipment and the experts of the Digital Teaching Lab of the Max Planck School of PhotonicsExternal link.

All our digital teaching activities fulfill a twofold purpose. On one hand, we provide support for our faculty in their basic teaching activities, including didactic and technical aspects of digital education, such as course design, technical realization and broadcasting. On the other hand, we are working on solutions for pertinent challenges of digital education, such as hybrid photonics laboratories at different locations.

Our Current Activities 

XRTL Logo
Extended Reality (XR) web-based application to control real-world optical experimental setups in our labs.
Lab Buddy System with highlighted components.
The Lab Buddy System is one of our approaches to a truely hybrid experimental photonics lab. The concept is fully embedded and established in the M.Sc. Photonics course.
Open Photonics Innovation - ACP's Lichtwerkstatt
The first and so-far only Open Photonics Makerspace in Germany!
Digital photonics lecture.
The Digital Teaching Lab of the Max Planck School of Photonics in Jena provides hardware, software and expert know-how for the best digital teaching for supervisors, teachers and digital enthusiasts.
Students on their arrival in Jena
A Moodle-based collection of useful information for a successful start in the M.Sc. Photonics program.
Virtual copy of the ACP Plaza.
Abbe School of Photonics offers an opportunity for remote students and lecturers in a digital twin environment of our real-world Abbe School of Photonics in Jena: Gather.town!

More Digitalization Tools and Opportunities

An impression of teaching via the ASP lightboard.
Image: Falko Sojka
The digiPHOTON project was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) from 2020 until 2022 and was a milestone for enabling studying remotely through digitalization of the M.Sc. Photonics program.
XRTL experiment sidview
Image: Clara Henkel
In order to facilitate remote students’ active participation in the laboratory experiments, a remotely controlled system was developed in close collaboration with the Lichtwerkstatt Jena. This development is ongoing and open for new ideas and extensions.
Demonstration of a virtual photonics lab.
Image: Steffen Walther.
AR and VR methods
Essential parts of the research-oriented training and central laboratory internships are transferred to virtual rooms. Technologies and interaction schemes from virtual and augmented reality are used. It is possible to enter laboratories virtually and complete the training modules without the need for a real presence.
ACP PI Prof. Malte Kaluza offering a hybrid lecture on ultrafast physics.
Image: Jens Meyer (University of Jena)
Hybrid Learning Solutions
In addition to the streaming-ready lecture halls at our University, our digital team has installed additional conference systems in all seminar rooms of the ACP building to enable both students as well as lecturers to attend events remotely and interact with one another.
Jari Domke demonstrating ASP's streaming setup.
Image: Falko Sojka
Mobile Streaming Setup
This Setup was made possible by the Max Planck School and allows to create an environment for studio quality records including Green Screen Technology in nearly every location.
Claudia Rödl explaining fundamental math concepts in a hybrid lecture.
Image: Falko Sojka
Studio for Educational Videos
To prepare for unexpected terms of absence from daily studies, some core elements of the initial study phase like the Prep Course Math were recorded and edited to serve as backup learning material in case of lecture outages.
Prof. Rick Trebino (Georgia Tech University), winner of the 2019 SPIE Maria J. Yzuel Educator Award.
Image: SPIE
One of our prime collaborators is Prof. Rick Trebino (Georgia Tech University, Atlanta, USA), an international expert in ultrafast optics and spectroscopy. For quite some years, Prof. Trebino has been developing high-quality courses of PowerPoint lectures for four college-level optics and physics courses, complete with pictures, movies, animations, and derivations. This material is provided on his website and fully open to every student, teacher, and lecturer for use and distribution.
JOSDES 2022
Graphic: Subham Adak
This exciting event was the first online conference on digital education held in the Gather.town twin of the Abbe Center of Photonics!

Contact

Falko SOJKA
Falko SOJKA
Image: Private

Dr. Falko SOJKA

Project team leader digiPHOTON
Phone:         +49 3641 9-47578
Email:          falko.sojka@uni-jena.de

Digitalization of the MSc Photonics course

Abbe Center of PhotonicsExternal link - Office 202