Pedagogy of Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning and Computer Vision in a Community College Setting

A deployment of artificial intelligence-based (AIbased) examples was used to prepare students interested in undergraduate research projects with online delivery modality in a community college setting.The AI based examples aimed to offer experiential experience in Machine Learning using discriminant analysis based on training statistics.A computer vision module was developed to illustrate an application to the analysis of images of Solar Dynamics Observatory.Industrial applications such as the solar panel image analysis in Green Energy Technology, satellite image analysis in geo engineering, etc. are included as examples.The pedagogy was initially tested with two students and then deployed as capstone examples to engineering and engineering technology students interested in research with authentic experience.Although a toy-model conversion for deployment to fulfill the first-year experience criterion was challenging given the setting of open admissions, the newly graduated high school students with strong intentions in the programming career were found to be successful in the learning of Python fundamentals.The recent Microsoft Office 365 addition of Python into Excel competes well with Google Colab and would alleviate the pedagogical challenges in the inclusion of first-year experience deployment.A set of reflection questions were used for assessment, and with AI assisted writing, the assessment results supported the efficacy of the deployment as a second-year experience.Future AI-based examples on the convolutional neural network (CNN) for synchrotron radiation imaging data analysis and diffusion model driven Generative AI for synthetic image generation are discussed.