Adopting Student-centred Approach to Advance Database teaching

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Adopting Student-centred Approach to Advance
Database teaching

• Samia Oussena
• Thames Valley University

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Contents

• Our Institution
• Module Delivery
• Module Assignment
• Conclusion

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The institution

• Three campuses
• 3 mode of delivery (full-time, part-time and
  open-learner)

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The module

• Compulsory 1st semester module to all final year
  student
• Assumes that students have an understanding of
  database systems and SQL
• Delivery between the 3 campuses synchronised
  through blackboard
• Student tracking on
• Practical work undertaken on Oracle 10g
• Accessed through iSQLPLUS

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The assignment

• Develop final year cognitive skills as well as
  practical skills
• 10 of the course work is allocated to the
  practical exercise
• 6 practical exercises
• Each week deals with one aspect of the
  object-relational database concept.

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Part 1 of the assignment

• Critical review and presentation of a recent
  research paper
• Develop particular interest aspects of databases
  such as data mining, distributed databases, XML
  databases
• Selection of a suitable paper
• to encourage wider reading
• to develop discrimination in terms of sources
  used
• to develop understanding of research system of
  citations, impact
• to develop careful reading and précis skills
• to develop skills in evaluating evidence and
  claims.

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Part 2 of the assignment

• Implementation of an object-relation database
  system
• Case studies extracted from national publication
  (NHS Telehealth, the national identity card)
• Authenticity to the problem
• No-trivial database system
• Complex data types

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Scope the system
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What is required from them

• Produce a class diagram
• Level of details required in the diagram
• Identify classes that are going to be implemented
  by tables and classes that will be implemented
  by user defined types
• All classes need to have their attributes
  identified and typed. The type may be a complex
  type which will be naturally implemented as a
  user defined type.
• Identify all classes methods. These would not
  include the setter and getter methods.
• None of the methods are required to deal with the
  user interface.

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What is required from them (cont)

• Documentation of database schema test data
• Experience
• Student create a type for each class and create a
  table of unary relation based on the type
• Implement all the types studies (nested table,
  VARRAY, Ref type)

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What is required from them (cont)

• Methods are implemented in PL/SQL or JAVA
• Triggers need to be identified and implemented.
• Identify and implement Order or Map function
  for user defined types
• Identify and implement methods that are relevant
  to the application.
• Identify methods that will generate relevant
  reports.
• Experience
• Most methods are written in PL/SQL
• Weak Student struggle with this part.

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Conclusion

• Students find challenging
• To weigh the merits of different design options
• To reflect on their practice and skills
  development
• The full-time employees started the module with
  superior practical skills and self-organisation
  but needed their horizons broadened by
  understanding the complexities and creativity
  that object-relational databases involves
• the full-time computer students found the
  realistic nature of the case studies challenging