Standard instruction

Optics technician certifications offered by OST include a one-year certificate and a two-year associate degree. The one-year certificate encompasses 27 credit hours of study (including 26 optics course credits) and the associate degree encompasses 61 credit hours of study (including 42 optics course credits). Courses are instructed over a standard 15-week semester. The OST curriculum includes optical manufacturing and optical physics learning. Both aspects involve a combination of in-class lectures and hands-on skill development. This modality of optics technician instruction has been in use at MCC since the inception of the OST program in 1963.

Thanks to grant funding from the Office of Naval Research⁵, materials for remote instruction of most optics courses were developed for the OST program prior to 2020. The COVID-19 outbreak accelerated use of these materials for remote learning, with limited time on-campus for hands-on skill building. Worldwide advances in the infrastructure for remote communications, fiber Internet, and online sharing tools were critical enablers for this remote instruction. OST curriculum courses that do not require on-campus equipment continue to be offered 100% remotely, enabling students outside the geographic region of the college to complete these introduction courses without the need to come to campus. This has proven effective for four years and is expected to continue in coming years to increase the reach of the program to a greater number of students.

Condensed laboratory instruction

OST initiated asynchronous laboratory instruction for optical manufacturing and optical physics courses in 2023, to facilitate employee participation in apprenticeship programs.^6,7,8 Students receiving this instruction take all classroom instruction remotely during standard semesters and defer hands-on experiences to the end of the semester. All course-required skill building activities and assignments are completed at MCC campus in an intensive session. The schedule piloted for courses has been a 1-to-2-week period with 6-8 hours of daily instruction, matching the number of standard instruction hours. Lab practical exams confirming competence and retention are also included.

MCC is not the only optics education center making use of this condensed hands-on instruction. The Hybrid Optics Master’s Education (HOME) MS Program at the University of Rochester Institute of Optics is one example of efforts at other universities.⁹

Students participating in this mode of instruction at MCC are assisted with logistics such as transportation and (on-campus) lodging. The same professors that instructed the course during the semester provide the post-semester instruction. This provides as consistent a learning experience as possible between these asynchronous learners and their classmates. Since this instruction option was developed to support apprenticeship programs, participants have had prior on-the-job experience manufacturing precision optics albeit at skill levels that vary from student to student. On average, these students have been more focused in approach to their studies than the general population of students.

Pilot class sizes have been limited to 1-3 students with full-time faculty providing instruction. (The intense schedule is more challenging for adjunct faculty to support given busy work schedules.) This more intimate environment has resulted in a higher level of engagement, with students asking more questions during instruction and receiving individualized attention. The asynchronous nature of hands-on instruction versus classroom learning has not been observed to have a significant impact on student performance. Participation in remote lectures during the regular semester has proven to provide the proper knowledge and context needed for the post-semester hands-on sessions. In the case of the manufacturing courses, students were often able to remotely see equipment they would be working with, increasing their familiarity with the equipment prior to arriving on campus. For the optical physics courses, it was found helpful to have a teaching assistant present – particularly someone who had just completed the semester-long version of the lab course and who could act as an experienced lab partner for the condensed lab students.

Results from the initial pilots of this instruction method have been positive. One associate degree graduate and two certificate completers received 100% of their optics coursework via this instruction method. Compared to classmates who received standard instruction (100% on-campus, synchronous learning), condensed-lab students exhibited higher grades, submitted more-detailed reports, and demonstrated stronger comprehension of key skills and concepts. These early successes give OST confidence that this form of training can be expanded to increase enrollment of students nationwide to graduate higher numbers of trained optics technicians.

No significant logistical or financial aid issues arose in the to-date pilots of this instruction method. This is due to addressing several issues in advance of instruction. Grant funding for low-enrollment instruction permitted standard university class size requirements to be circumvented. The course catalog was modified to include special condensed-lab class sections whose enrollment was tightly controlled by the faculty. Equally essential, employers provided both encouragement and job bandwidth forgiveness for their employees to receive the training. Enabling factors like these examples are an important part of the planning when offering non-standard learning methods.

Instructor perception is that the condensed-lab method maintains high consistency with standard instruction in the scope and equipment used. Nevertheless, opportunities remain to strengthen this instruction method. Representative examples of these opportunities include:

Figure 1.

Examples of training and equipment involved in condensed-laboratory optics technician instruction at Monroe Community College. (a) An optical manufacturing apprenticeship student receiving condensed-lab instruction. (b) A fabrication station in the advanced optical manufacturing lab equipped with a digital camera to permit viewing of hands-on manufacturing by remote students that will perform hands-on activities asynchronously from their classmates.

Optical manufacturing microcredential instruction

MCC is preparing initial pilots of microcredential course offerings for optics technicians. This training requires students to pass a three-course sequence in optical manufacturing. Each of the three courses is presented in consecutive five-week periods. The sequence completes in a single 15-week semester, preparing students for immediate employment as precision optics manufacturing technicians.

This mode of instruction provides a key service to workforce development. Microcredential graduates that do not desire to continue their education beyond this core level of training are qualified to begin a career operating precision manufacturing and testing equipment. This fills a key gap in the workforce landscape: employers need new hires that can operate manufacturing equipment without lengthy training that reduces the bandwidth of seasoned technicians; students wish to begin employment with reduced impact on personal finances and time required to complete longer-term degree programs.

For this instruction method to be successful, it must not compete with the resources allocated for other degree programs and instruction methods. MCC is renovating a parallel set of manufacturing laboratories that contain the equipment needed to run microcredential sequences in parallel to other courses offered through the OST department.

Qualified instructors are another critical resource essential to offer microcredential certification. A diverse population of adjunct professors must be cultivated. This is challenging. The intensive nature of microcredential instruction ideally requires teachers to be available for all-day sessions, making it difficult to take on instruction duties around commitments to employers. Should this training pathway prove popular, it is desirable to continuously run multiple sequences for higher graduation rates. This would require the hiring of multiple full-time faculty members, which will be assessed as pilots are conducted and enrollment is evaluated. The first microcredential sequence is anticipated for Fall 2025.

Pre-apprenticeship program instruction

The MCC OST department has also begun development of a pre-apprenticeship program in optical manufacturing. Apprenticeship programs provide employees with a combination of classroom and on-the-job experiences needed to progress to higher levels of capability and responsibility; pre-apprenticeship programs provide unskilled persons with core skills sufficient to obtain entry-level employment – and one day to participate in an apprenticeship program. MCC is located in Rochester, New York which has the employer base and the population base to warrant pre-apprenticeship training for the optical manufacturing sector. The 2022 poverty level in Rochester was approximately 28% which is well above the national average of 11.5%.^10,11 More than 120 optics/photonics companies are located in this region¹², offering life-changing employment opportunities for residents.

MCC pre-apprenticeship training is to be offered in a state-of-the-art facility accessible to the greater metropolitan population. This facility, the Finger Lakes Workforce Development (FWD) Center¹³, offers training in several areas of technical study as a pipeline to train residents for challenging careers in the key regional employment sectors – including optics and photonics.

The optical manufacturing pre-apprenticeship program will provide two tiers of training in basic optical science, optics cleaning and handling, precision optics manufacturing, and optical inspection and metrology.¹⁴ Each level will include 15-20 hours of direct instruction, including hands-on exercises to build the basic eye-hand coordination skills and to understand standard optics manufacturing techniques. At the completion of this instruction, participants will be prepared to obtain an entry-level optics technician position and will be ready to enter MCC OST certificate/degree programs if they so desire.

Table 1.

Comparison of standard and accelerated learning methods for precision optics and optical manufacturing education.