Rethinking and Redesigning an Image Processing Course from a Problem-Based Learning Perspective

Our experience at the Media Technology department, Aalborg University Copenhangen has shown that learning core concepts and techniques in image processing is a challenge for undergraduate students. One possible cause for this is the gap between understanding the mathematical formalism of such concepts and being able to use them for solving real-world problems. The Problem-Based Learning (PBL) pedagogy is an approach, which favours learning by applying knowledge to solve such problems. However, formulating an appropriate project for image processing courses presents challenges on how to appropriately present relevant concepts and techniques to students. This article presents our redesign of an image processing course at the Media Technology department, which focused on relevant concept and technique presentation and design projects and employed a game engine (Unity) in order to present such concepts and techniques. In a Unity environment, we developed visualizations of core concepts and basic image processing techniques. Unity was also used by students for developing projects (games) as assignments. The first offering of this new course format has been an intense learning experience for the instructional team. Media Technology students have welcomed the idea of using for image processing a tool they already use for other courses. Moreover, the visualizations and design projects in Unity have proved to increase student understanding compared to previous semesters, where other programming libraries were used. Since these preliminary results were very positive, we are planning to conduct a large scale quantitative study on the use of Unity and student understanding of image processing concepts during next year.