Facilitating Efficacious Transfer of Database Knowledge and Skills

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Facilitating Efficacious Transfer of Database
Knowledge and Skills

• Dr. Karen Renaud karen_at_dcs.gla.ac.uk
• Huda Al-Shuaily huda_at_dcs.gla.ac.uk

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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.

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Motivation

• RESEARCH MOTIVATION
• Making learning database easy
• Helping students to understand DB concepts.
• Helping students to master DB skills

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Content

• Learning Taxonomy
• Database teaching problems
• Database teaching approach based on Gormans
  Taxonomy
• Pedagogical patterns

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Blooms Taxonomy (1956)
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GORMANS TAXONOMY(2002)
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Teaching database problems

• Based on learning theory, there are possible two
  reasons for problems in transferring database
  concepts and skills
• Order of delivery of database concepts and skill
  assimilation
• Skills taught before underlying
  concepts are understood
• The tools that are being used during the teaching
  Tools do not facilitate correct learning

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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.

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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?

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APPLYING GORMANS TAXONOMY TO OUR TEACHING
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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)

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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

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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

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Our pattern

• Teaching Database content based on Gormans
  Taxonomy
• The pattern consists of Name, Intent, Force,
  Solution, Applicability and Consequences.

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Name Teaching Database content based on Gormans 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 example Security, data cleaning, distributed databases, replication, mobile databases, decision support, object relational databases, hierarchical and network databases 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. Employers expectations of employee will be met. Optimal database design, efficient SQL queries and correct use of databases in applications. next
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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.

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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 example Security, data cleaning, distributed databases, replication, mobile databases, decision support, object relational databases, hierarchical and network databases 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.
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Discussion
Waterfall model approach Wise or ill-Advised?

• Cognitive load theory
• Gormans 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

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Questions.