Facilitating Efficacious Transfer of Database Knowledge and Skills

Huda Al-Shuaily huda@dcs.gla.ac.uk

Purpose

• Database knowledge and skills have become vitally important to organizations and companies

• A recent European survey found that the skill companies consider to be most lacking in new IT graduate recruits was database design (Connolly, 2005).

• Educators face a number of challenges while teaching these concepts and skills.

Motivation

RESEARCH MOTIVATION:

Making learning database easy

Helping students to understand DB concepts.

Helping students to master DB skills

Content

Learning Taxonomy

Database teaching problems

Database teaching approach based on Gorman’s Taxonomy

Pedagogical patterns

Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956)

GORMAN’S TAXONOMY(2002)

Teaching database problems

Based on learning theory, there are possible two reasons for problems in transferring database concepts and skills

1. Order of delivery of database concepts and skill assimilation

Skills taught before underlying concepts are understood

2. The tools that are being used during the teaching Tools do not facilitate correct learning

Problems in teaching database concepts and skills

Underlying concepts were not taught correctly or key concepts not covered.

Basic concepts not fully understood.

Skills take time to learn so can not be hurried

Students study for exams and not to master concepts.

Tools used in teaching DB

Universities and institutes often use Microsoft Access to support teaching activities in introductory courses such as Introduction to Database

Wise or ill-Advised?

APPLYING GORMAN’S TAXONOMY TO OUR TEACHING

Solution !!

1. Basic concepts (What)EX: relations, primary keys, indexing, storage structures, recovery and concurrency

2. Skills (How)EX: SQL, normalisation, design with ER diagrams, query optimisation, XML

3. Business Context (When)EX: Web and DBMS, database generated GUIs, application programming (eg JDBC),

error management, deductive and temporal databases.

4. Non-functional Requirements (Why)

Patterns ..

Patterns originated in the field of building architecture

“each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that.”

Christopher Alexander

Pedagogical patterns

“A pedagogical pattern describes an abstract teaching approach from which contextualized training strategies can be generated, so that the subsequent educators are not forced to start over when they design new course and learning resources”

Lilly, 1996

Our pattern

Teaching Database content based on Gorman’s Taxonomy

The pattern consists of: Name, Intent, Force, Solution, Applicability and Consequences.

Name Teaching Database content based on Gorman’s Taxonomy

Intent Explain the order of the content that database courses should follow.

Force Key concepts not covered or not fully understood by students. Then when the lecturer moves on to later concepts the student has no chance of progressing up the pyramid to being skilled database designer and user.Skills are introduced to the students (even if the basic concept not covered or introduced) and expected to be mastered within a small period of time. Students are expecting to be able to apply their skills to any business context- even skills not mastered without or with little explanation about different contexts.

Solution Step 1 (what): Introduce the basic concepts first such as functional dependencies, relations, transactions, primary keys,

indexing, storage structures, recovery and concurrency. Make sure that students have completely understood all required concepts. Usually not less than 40 contact hours.

Step 2 (How “building skills”): This step should not begin before the successful completion of step 1. Teaching skills related are: SQL, normalisation, design with ER diagrams, relational algebra, query optimisation and XML. Step 2 takes longer than step 1.

Step 3 (When “Applying”): How to apply the mastered skills in step 2 to “Business Context” for exampleo Security, data cleaning, distributed databases, replication, mobile databases, decision support, object relational

databases, hierarchical and network databaseso Web and DBMS, database generated GUIs, application programming (eg JDBC), error management, deductive and

temporal databases. Step 4 (Why): Particular techniques are applied in particular situations to maximise the efficacy. For example, non-functional

Requirements.

Applicability Teaching programming courses like Java, C,C++,etc.Consequences • Students will be able to carry out database analysis and design.

• Employer’s expectations of employee will be met.• Optimal database design, efficient SQL queries and correct use of databases

in applications. next

Force • Key concepts not covered or not fully understood by students. Then when the lecturer moves on to later concepts the student has no chance of progressing up the pyramid to being skilled database designer and user.• Skills are introduced to the students (even if the basic concept not covered or introduced) and expected to be mastered within a small period of time. • Students are expecting to be able to apply their skills to any business context- even skills not mastered without or with little explanation about different contexts.

Solution Step 1 (what): Introduce the basic concepts first such as functional dependencies, relations, transactions, primary keys, indexing, storage structures, recovery and concurrency. Make sure that students have completely understood all required concepts. Usually not less than 40 contact hours.

Step 2 (How “building skills”): This step should not begin before the successful completion of step 1. Teaching skills related are: SQL, normalisation, design with ER diagrams, relational algebra, query optimisation and XML. Step 2 takes longer than step 1.

Step 3 (When “Applying”): How to apply the mastered skills in step 2 to “Business Context” for exampleo Security, data cleaning, distributed databases, replication, mobile

databases, decision support, object relational databases, hierarchical and network databases

o Web and DBMS, database generated GUIs, application programming (eg JDBC), error management, deductive and temporal databases.

Step 4 (Why): Particular techniques are applied in particular situations to maximise the efficacy. For example, non-functional Requirements.

Discussion

Cognitive load theory

+

Gorman’s Taxonomy

Knowledge: first – skills: later

students learn a lot of ‘dry boring’ database theory

students will get bored ?

Interactive teaching methodology

Engaging student in problem-based activities

Waterfall model approachWise or ill-Advised?

QUESTIONS….