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Taking advantage of low enrollment scheduled courses for the integration of research and teaching

This paper presents a case study on the viability of turning a course with low enrolment into an opportunity for a research project based course that effectively combines teaching and research for undergraduate students. The advantages, disadvantages, and issues encountered are discussed based on experiences acquired at The College of New Jersey during a special topics class on digital image processing. The overriding goal was to take advantage of a regularly scheduled class with low enrolment to provide students with powerful learning experiences that they can easily transfer to graduate school and/or a future workplace. The advantages of using this approach are numerous, as it turns a situation that can potentially de-motivate students into a win-win scenario for the faculty and the students. Conclusions on the approach of combining research and teaching in a fixed time frame setting are derived taking into account student feedback for this type of course