Student teacher in China teaching children English. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This series is basically focused on how best to teach a course or subject so that it reaches to its maximum depth in terms of understanding for the student. I will not say I am any sort of expert in teaching but I am just sharing some of the learning, secrets and realizations I have come across till date in this respect. I am not targeting any particular age-group or demography for teaching and consider that this content is applicable in general to all with good learning tendencies.
STEP 1: Problem and Applications
Always start with an example or problem in the real world, where the course or subject to be taught has its direct relevance, giving student an opportunity to understand its impact in its near-neighbourhood. Often I have seen that in books and courses, only a subtle references are mentioned like lets say we are teaching a vast subject like image processing, then it is not sufficient to just mention face recognition or augmented reality. What sparks student’s interest is a valid visible problem that can entice him/her to delve deeper into the subject. The moment one mentions a problem with a large amount of detail for clarity, the brain initiates its processing in the background to find a solution. The degree of detail for a course or subject can be restricted by taking a one example and exploring it to a depth in terms of problems it offers before one starts explaining the subject.
I will briefly mention an example of fingerprint recognition for the ones interested in knowing how this technique can be applied for effective teaching.
- Fingerprint recognition is one of the mainstream research areas in biometrics and image processing. One can illustrate the fingerprints of each individual in the course group as an experiment to find out its unique features and group students based on different patterns they see in their thumbprints.
Short ridge on fingeprint (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
- Once they have found some patterns, they will know that they are seeing some kind of repetition which brain is very good at identifying. Now, a nomenclature can be assigned to each of these features so that they can update their vocabulary of the subject.
- Next, we are dealing with the actual subject matter so it is helpful to illustrate problems in recognition. Here, I propose using a ink so that they can make thumbprints and see how each individual makes a different print and the way they depress their thumbs, an impression is created. With repeated use, the ink pattern loses its sharpness and we come across such problems of identifying these blurry patterns in real life for fingerprint recognition.
- Each problem can be solved in probably some different ways and therefore, it is important that student’s brain is not clouded with existing ways to solve unless he understands the problem and tries to find and develop his/her own solutions. At this developing stage where the sparks are just being created, a small input can do wonders and student is already on his/her path of self-discovery of the subject.
