Observation Report by Gorn Tepvorachai
Describe the academic setting that you observed. Include the
professional's role in this setting. What were the goals for this class or
laboratory? Were the goals accomplished?
I observed a graduate level classroom, which consists of 12 students in a
lecturing room with capacity of about 40. The professor gave the class a lecture
on a fundamental image processing process for one hour and fifteen minutes (one
class period). The goal of this class was to introduce students to the basic
process in image enhancement, i.e. contrast adjustment and image balancing, in
both space domain and Fourier domain. The goal was accomplished by demonstrating
a simple set of calculations on a given small-size input. Then, a larger example
was illustrated by running a MatLab code on a computer.
Describe the instructional strategies that enhanced the class or
laboratory that you observed. Consider the degree of involvement and interaction
that the students had with each other and the professional.
The instructional strategies that enhanced the class I observed could be
described in the following three steps. First, the professor motivated students
by telling them about how great the performance of a basic image processing was,
which was illustrated by comparing a given input image and several output
images. Next, background calculations, which were carried out during the
process, were visited step-by-step and demonstrated by doing hand calculation on
a small-size input. Finally, the professor concluded the whole process could be
done automatically with a MatLab code on a computer for processing larger input
images. The degrees of involvement and interaction between the professor and the
students were acceptable. The students were taking notes and answering to
questions the professor asked them about the calculations and their experiences.
Discuss what you have learned from this observation that you would like
to include in your own repertoire of instructional strategies.
I learned that an effective strategy of teaching students was to tell them
about the subject over and over again in many different ways. Like in this
classroom, the professor lectured on the subject three times with three
different methods: story telling, hand calculation, and computer demonstration.
I could certainly take these approaches and include in my repertoire of
instructional strategies.