Teacher’s Guide

Case study · AI Tools & Strategy · Learning Design

Everything the faculty member who teaches MNT130 needs to take it over, verify the physics, run the labs safely, and own it. A hybrid course is never handed off without directions; this is the directions, and with lasers, safety comes first.

1. Read this first

This course was drafted with AI, and you are the expert who checks it, on the physics and on safety. The first build was assembled by an AI panel acting as an industry photonics practitioner, an instructional designer, and a synthetic student. That makes it a strong, standards-aligned starting point, and it can be wrong. Before you teach any part of it, review it for technical accuracy and, above all, for laser-safety correctness, as the real subject-matter expert. Nothing here reaches a student until you have signed off on it.

2. You are not doing this alone

You are the subject-matter expert. An industry photonics practitioner reviews and owns the physics, the math, and every safety procedure. Confirm the resource links, adjust for your equipment, and make it yours.
Meet with the learning designer before the course goes live to walk it through and customize it to how you actually teach.
Loop in your lab and safety coordinator. Confirm the room, the laser inventory and classes, the controlled-area setup, eyewear stock and optical densities, and your institution’s laser-safety officer sign-off before any student is on the bench.
Take your center’s online-teaching certificate if you have not; it covers the getting-started module, presence, and interaction in depth.

3. What is in the package

The full course: six online lessons, six in-person labs, materials with licenses, and the point-valued rubrics (900 points in all).
The syllabus and schedule, with itemized seat time and the lab sequence.
A concept-lecture deck per lesson, with speaker notes that are your recording scripts.
The lab guides and criterion-referenced skills-demonstration rubrics, including the laser-safety demonstration.
The homework sets (50 points each) and their keys.

4. Laser safety and running the in-person labs

The safety gate is non-negotiable.

The laser-safety demonstration (Lab 2) must pass before any other lab score counts. This is a mastery prerequisite, not a graded average: a student who has not demonstrated safe handling does not proceed to work on the bench. It is the one competency where the cost of failure is physical, not academic.

Every hands-on competency is assessed in person on a point-valued skills demonstration, six labs at 100 points each. Before each lab:

Eye protection first. Confirm each student has, and wears, eyewear with the correct optical density for the laser’s wavelength and output, computed against the maximum permissible exposure (this is Lesson 5’s math, applied for real).
Controls and classes. Verify the laser class, the controlled area, interlocks, beam stops, and that beams stay below eye level. Walk the controls before students touch anything.
Optics handling. Reinforce clean handling, mounting, and alignment; contamination and stray reflections are both safety and quality issues.
Score to the rubric. Each lab has a criterion-referenced rubric; the bar is fixed to the Photonics Technician Operator competency, not curved to the class. A skill is either demonstrated or it is not.

5. Recording your concept lectures

Keep each concept lecture to about thirty minutes, and never over that by much.

The lectures are scripted for it, and the time is already in the seat-time budget, so you do not have to find room for it.

Your scripts are written. Open any lesson deck and read the speaker notes under each slide; that is your walkthrough, in order. Present the deck, record, done.

Tools. OBS Studio (free, best quality), or Zoom local recording, Loom, QuickTime, or Panopto if your LMS has it.

Caption every video (accessibility requirement). Loom, Panopto, and Zoom auto-caption; for OBS or QuickTime, upload the video unlisted to YouTube for auto-captions and download the .srt.

6. Your weekly hybrid rhythm, this is the RSI, and it is required

Regular and Substantive Interaction is a federal requirement for the online portion, and it has to be instructor-initiated and human. Each week:

Post an announcement and your short concept-lecture intro for the lesson.
Run the lab session in person, with the safety walk-through first, then the skills demonstration.
Reach out midweek to any student who has not engaged online or who is behind on the pre-lab work.
Give feedback that says what was demonstrated, what needs work, and the next step, within 24 to 48 hours.
Close the loop with a short reflection on what you saw in the cohort’s work that week.

7. What is safe to change, and what keeps it aligned and safe

Make this yours. But a few things hold the course to standard and to safety, so talk to the learning designer before you touch them.

Change freely: your examples, your voice, your equipment specifics, the pace within a week, which optional resources you emphasize.
Do not change without the designer: the learning outcomes and their alignment to the Photonics Technician Operator competencies, the seat-time budget, and the accessibility features.
Do not weaken, ever: the laser-safety gate, the eye-protection requirements, and the criterion standard on each lab. These are safety, not preference.

8. Before the first lab, a checklist

Reviewed the course for technical accuracy and safety correctness, as the subject-matter expert.
Met with the learning designer and flagged anything to customize.
Confirmed the lab room, laser inventory and classes, controlled area, and interlocks with your safety coordinator.
Confirmed eyewear stock at the correct optical densities for every laser in use.
Recorded your welcome video and concept-lecture intros (short, captioned).
Set and posted your availability and your 24 to 48 hour response window.
Confirmed the syllabus, the schedule, the lab sequence, and the getting-started module.
Enrolled in your center’s online-teaching certificate if you have not.