About Hands-on Vision Science

Welcome!

My name is Ben Balas. I'm a Professor in the Psychology Department at North Dakota State University. Since 2018, I've been developing exercises that use real materials like lenses, lasers, mirrors, and paper models to give undergraduate students in my Sensation & Perception class at NDSU a chance to carefully examine their own visual experience and start thinking about why things look the way that they do. Hands-on Vision Science is an approach to teaching visual perception that makes careful observation of natural visual phenomena central to the introduction of core concepts.

What you will find here are materials and resources to help you incorporate exercises like this into your classroom.:

(1) Step-by-step instructions for ~20 different hands-on vision science exercises, each of which contains pictures illustrating what to do, links to vendors that sell some of the materials that you need, and suggestions for additional exercises to try. These are very much living documents, so please contact me if you have suggestions for additional demos or modifications/clarifications for items that are already posted.

(2) You will also find a link to the workbook I wrote for my students, which you are free to use for your course if you wish. The workbook includes quantitative and conceptual questions after each chapter and is written in a conversational style.

(3) Finally, you will also find links to journal articles that I think are great to share with undergraduate students or use as the basis for more discussion and experimentation.

I hope you find some of this useful, but please let me know if you have suggestions about more things to include or ways to make this a better resource for instructors. Enjoy, and happy observing!