Trends and Innovations in Database System

1. TRENDS AND INNOVATIONS IN
DATABASE COURSE
By
Neetu Sardana
JIIT, Noida
1

2. TABLE 1: IEEE/ACM RECOMMENDED SET OF TOPICS PER DATABASE-
RELATED MODULE
2

3. 3

4. ACM/IEEE RECOMMENDED CURRICULUM GUIDELINES
FOR UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE PROGRAMS IN
COMPUTER SCIENCE
1. Explain the characteristics that distinguish the database approach
from the approach of programming with data files.
2. Describe the most common designs for core database system
components including the query optimizer, query executor, storage
manager, access methods, and transaction processor.
3. Cite the basic goals, functions, and models of database systems.
4. Describe the components of a database system and give
examples of their use.
5. Identify major DBMS functions and describe their role in a database
system.
6. Explain the concept of data independence and its importance in a
database system.
7. Use a declarative query language to elicit information from a
database.
8. Describe facilities that databases provide supporting structures
and/or stream (sequence) data, e.g., text.
4

5. OUTLINE
 Learning Taxonomy
 Database teaching approach based on Gorman’s
Taxonomy
 Database teaching problems
 Teaching/Learning Approaches adopted by various
Universities
 Interactive Computational Educational Systems tools
 ADVICE—Educational System for Teaching Database
Courses
5

6. LEARNING TAXONOMY
Attempts to break down & categorize type of
learning to help designers develop objectives &
learning strategies that best match with the specific
type of learning that is targeted.
6

7. FIG 1: BLOOM’S TAXONOMY (1956)
Evaluation
Synthesis
Analysis
Application
Comprehension
Knowledge
Reference: K. Renaud, H. Al-Shuaily, R. Cooper, Facilitating Efficacious Transfer of
Database Knowledge and Skills (2009), Proc. of The 26th British National Conference
7

8. FIG 2: GORMAN’S TAXONOMY(2002)
Why
When
How
What
8

9. 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
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)
APPLYING GORMAN’S TAXONOMY TO OUR TEACHING
9

10. PROBLEMS IN TEACHING DATABASE CONCEPTS
 The Teaching methods are outdated and does not
pay attention to combination of theory and
practice
 A recent European survey found that the skill companies
consider to be most lacking in new IT graduate recruits was
database design (Connolly, 2005).
 Assessment Mode is not Conducive to Examine
Students Practical skills.
References: Jingmin Wang, Haoli Chen, Research and Practice on the Teaching
Reform of Database Course (2014), International Conference on Education Reform and
Modern Management, Atlantic Press, 229-231.
10

11. VARIOUS LEARNING APPROACHES
 Constructivist Based Approach
 Cooperative Group projects Approach
 Phenomenographic Approach
 Collaborative Learning Technique
11

12. Constructivist view is that learning is an active process where new
knowledge is constructed based on the learner’s prior knowledge,
the social context, and problem to be solved.
Learner select and transform information, construct hypothesis and
makes decisions
Emphases in one need for open ended exploratory authentic learning
environment in which learner can develop meaningful and
transferable knowledge & understanding
It comprises problem based as well as project based learning model
Constructivist Based Approach (University of the
West of Scotland)
Thomas M Connolly, Carolyn E Begg, Constructivist Based Approach to Teaching
Database Analysis & Design (2006), Journal of Information Systems Education,
17(1), 43-51.
12

13.  Applied the Constructivist learning approach to teach DBS to
the online groups.
 Scaffolding provided through teachers, creation of
visualizations of number of DB concepts.
 ER Modeling is taught using the UML , class Diagrams as it
provides the integration with the other analysis, design &
system development Modules.
 Project based teaching case approach used to demonstrate
appropriate knowledge and skills in DBS Domain
Constructivist Based Approach (Contd..)
Couses Offered
Business Database
Sytems
3rd yr UG
Fundamentals of DBS PG Course
13

14.  The paper compares the performance of 977
students divided into 3 groups one of which used
Constructivist project based Approach through
online delivery
 The evidence support the authors view that the
constructivist approach can improve student
learning
 Feedback from students were obtained from
students at the end f the module.
 They enjoyed the experience
14

15. Online Games Based Learning:
 Discusses a problem-based learning environment
based on Interactive visualization and computer
games to teach the learner develop the skills
necessary to understand and perform database
analysis and design effectively.
Constructivist Based Approach (University of Paisley )
Connolly, Thomas, Stansfield, Mark and McLellan, Evelyn, (2006) “Using an Online
Games- Based Learning Approach to Teach Database Design Concepts” The
Electronic Journal of e-Learning , 4(1),103-110,
15

16.  Earlier videos case studies were developed with real-
world organizational problem scenarios such as
organizational change within a library or a veterinary
practice to develop and apply a range of different skills
and concepts.
 Problems: Videos were not interactive
 Later online learning materials were modified. They
introduced interactive visualizations that enhanced
these materials.
 The simulation game helped them to learn and apply a
range of relevant skills and techniques relating to
database analysis and design.
Constructivist Based Approach (Contd..)
Designing the learning environment
16

17. Guiding Principles For The Online Games-Based
Learning Environment
1. Start with an authentic problem grounded in professional practice.
2. Encourage learners to take responsibility (ownership) for learning
3. Allow learners to develop their own process to reach a solution.
4. Provide opportunities for interaction either learner-learner, learner-
teacher or learner-system.
6. Ensure that the learning environment motivates, engages and
challenges the learner.
7. Provide feedback mechanisms.
8. Provide support mechanisms.
10. Provide opportunities for reflection, self-evaluation, articulation and
debriefing.
17

18. Fig4: Learning Environment
The simulation game provides a
real-world simulated environment
within which to apply skills and
techniques.
The visualizations enhance
learning by providing animated
walkthroughs of specific examples
The online learning units/topics
Introduce the concepts to be
explored.
Topics are hyperlinked to allow
non-sequential browsing.
18

19. At present, levels 1 and 2 of the environment have been developed and
initial findings are positive.
We have three cohorts of students taking the Fundamentals of Database
Systems module:
a full-time face-to-face cohort consisting of 920 students,
a part-time face-to-face cohort consisting of 177 students and
a fully online part-time cohort consisting of 14 students.
The prior knowledge and ability of the students in the three cohorts were
similar,
Only the online students were given access to the games-based learning
environment.
University’s grading system was used to determine whether there was any
observable difference between the three cohorts.
It is noted that a highly significant result is detected.
19

20.  Cooperative group learning concepts in support of an
undergraduate database management course that
emphasizes the theoretical and practical aspects of
database application development.
 Database system implementation using Microsoft
Access.
2: Cooperative Group projects (Arizona State
University)
Suzanne Dietrich, Susan D. Urban Database Theory in Practice: Learning From
Cooperative Group Projects (1996), ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 28(1), 112-116.
20

21.  The course project is divided into three main phases,
involving requirements analysis and conceptual design,
relational database mapping and database system
implementation using Microsoft Access.
 Phase 1 deliveries: an ER diagram with structural constraints
specified, a list of constraints that are not captured on the ER diagram,
and a summary of processing needs, categorized with respect to
expected forms, reports and queries.
 Phase 2 deliveries: a refined ER diagram, a relational schema for the
enterprise that indicates the attributes and keys of each relation a list
of functional dependencies holding on the enterprise and a discussion
on their relational design with respect to normal form, lossless join and
dependency preservation properties.
 Phase 3 deliveries: an overview of the system, a description of the
forms, reports and queries; and an appendix consisting of technical
support documentation, such as the ER diagram, the relational design,
and a description of the implementation of explicit constraints.
21

22.  GROUP ADMINISTRATION
 Each group consists of a team of 4 or 5 students.
 The roles that we assign to the members at each phase include phase
leader(L), phase recorder(R), phase checker(C) and phase technical
advisor(s)(T).
L: Responsible for coordinating the activities of the phase, establishing intermediate
deadlines and ensuring the on-time completion of the deliverable.
R: Establishes an outline and plan for generating the phase documentation and
ensures the correctness and quality of the final documentation.
C: Responsible for gathering and reviewing the assessment for each group
member, including the checker, and reporting the results of the assessment.
T: Technical support for the group
Table 1: Role Assignment
22

23.  Each group member signs a statement that acknowledges the importance of their
membership in the group and the penalty of withdrawing after groups are formed (a
failing grade within the course)
 Students also acknowledge that failure to contribute to the project results in a
grade of zero.
 Each team must turn in the appropriate documentation at each assigned due
date, even if it is incomplete.
 Satisfactory performance in each phase is required before going on to the next
phase.
 Teams that do not meet the minimum requirements for satisfactory work are required
to revise their work before moving on to the next phase.
 At the end of each phase, each group member must submit a confidential phase
evaluation that evaluates each group member’s participation and contribution on the
deliverable.
 This evaluation is both a self evaluation and a peer evaluation.
 When there is a consensus on the lack of the group member’s contribution, points
are deducted from that member’s grade. 23

24.  The phase intermediate and final deliverables, a group status report is
required.
 The status report provides the dates and attendance at group meetings
during the phase, an overview of the progress of the project and a
detailed list of expected and completed contributions for each group
member.
 The group status report is primarily the responsibility of the phase leader
with assistance by the phase recorder.
 Each group member must sign the report, indicating that they have
reviewed the report for correctness.
 The group status report gives a good indication of the division of labor
among group members.
 At the intermediate deliverable, the report gives the instructor the
opportunity to provide feedback on the delegation of responsibilities.
Assessment strategy:
 The assessment is performed by the phase checker to create and
encourage an environment in which peers help peers.
 The format for team assessment is provided by the instructor and may be
a combination of a written quiz, oral discussion questions, or a self-
assessment checklist.
 In all cases, the phase checker must evaluate the responses of each team
member and provide feedback.
24

25. Assessment strategy
 Dedicated a class period at the end of each phase
for brief presentations (10 minutes), which we
called phase summaries, by all groups.
 Students also wanted the ability to designate the
group member to give the presentation.
Observations
 The group project to the previous academic year
shows a substantial increase in the number of A, B
and C letter grades earned by the students with a
corresponding substantial decrease in the number
of D, E and W letter grades.
25

26.  Phenomenography is a qualitative research methodology that
investigates the qualitatively different ways in which people
experience something or think about something.
 It is an approach to educational research. It has been used to
research the experience of learning, the experience of teaching,
 Phenomenography has been used here to understand how the
teachers' own background influence their teaching. Through an
analysis of the teaching staffs’ feedbacks, the researchers also
discover how the learning of a subject is influenced by its teaching.
 The questionnaire is designed with the help of experts concerning the
basic database course. Then, four graduates from each university has
been asked to fill it out
 It investigates how and how well they have learned the basic
database course during their bachelor degree
3: Phenomenographic Approach
Karwan Jacksi, Database Teaching in Different Universities: A Phenomenographic
Research(2015) , International Journal of Emerging Technologies in
Computational and Applied Sciences (IJETCAS), 12(2), 96-100
26

27. University of Duhok
 The first database course spans in two semesters with 2 hrs of
theory and 2 hrs of practical
 There are 13 class lessons and 13 lab sessions each semester.
 Students take the lectures in classrooms while they do their works
in a lab room.
 In the labs, small practical exercises are given and corrected during
the lab with the help of two teaching assistants (TAs). No
assignments are given after lab.
 The assessment of the course is achieved by taking 2 written
exams as well as 2 lab exams each semester.
 The final mark for each semester is 65% of the written exams and
35% for the lab exams, while the final score of the course is the
average of the final semester marks.
The students took this course during their fourth year in their
bachelor program. They used MS access as the DBMS and
SQL as a programming tool. 27

28. 2) UNIVERSITY OF MOSUL
 The first database course spans 25 weeks.
 The students take both the labs and the ordinary lectures concurrently.
 Each week, 3 hrs of lectures and 2 hours of labs are scheduled.
 The lectures are delivered by the teacher in a class to show concepts and
examples.
 The labs are given by TAs in a lab room; they use their notebooks
connected to a data show projector to illustrate the software tools to be
used.
 No assignments, but there is a mid-term exam.
 At the end of the year there is a final theoretical written exam and a small
project.
 At the end of year, each group presents its product to the teacher and TAs,
and explains how they divided the tasks. After that, the students will answer
a few questions concerning their project. The final result for the project will
be given according to how well the students have done the project.
 The final grade is a total of the obtained marks.
The staffs of this university took their basic database course in their third year of the
studies. They used various developing tools. Some of them used Oracle as the
WebServer and PostgreSQL as the DBMS, while others used Oracle and MySql as the
DBMS. All of them used PHP as the programming language.
28

29. 3:NAWROZ UNIVERSITY
 The database course spans for the entire year
 Has class lessons and lab works which lasts 25 weeks. Each
week, a 2 hour lesson and a 2 hour lab.
 Teacher, usually, explains the course concepts from the slides
in a classroom via a data show projector.
 Students use computers in the labs for working on their
assignments and exercises with support of usually 3 TAs.
 The final result of this course is given according to two term
exams and a final exam. All exams have theoretical and
practical parts but a higher percentage of the marks go to the
theoretical part.
The staffs who took the survey studied the basic database
course in their second year of studies. They used MS
Access as DBMS and SQL as programming language.
29

30. Questions
1 Name of the University
2 In which year did you take the course? (1st, 2nd, 3rd,
4th)
3 Which programming language did you use?
4 Did you like the course? Why / Why not?
5 What are you able to do after taking the course?
6 Which developing tools did u use for the labs /
assignments / projects?
7 Did you pass the exam with a low/middle/high grade?
8 How did you get your final result? (Practice/Theo)
9 How many hours do you spend on the course after class
every week?
10 Suggestions for teaching/ lab working/ anything else
Phenomenographic Approach(Contd..)
30

31.  The situations in the three universities are
somehow different from each other
– different teaching structures
• The basic database course is offered in different
study periods.
• The teaching methods are also different.
• Furthermore, the expectations and evaluation
methods are different.
• It’s interesting that the students are learning about
the same technology through different paths
31

32. University Outcome
University of Duhok Most of the students liked the course Because they understood the goals and
contents of the course
– They passed the course with high grades but they were not able to create a
complex database design. Because there are no projects and no
assignments
– Suggestions from most participants were to increase the number of hours
spent on practical lectures and labs
University of Mosul – Most of the students liked the subject. Taking this course in the fourth
year made it easier for the students. Because they used some of the
knowledge from the courses they had already taken
– The students had to apply and practice what they learned on their own.
– Having projects They were able to design and implement database
systems with different complexity and manage the relational DBMS with
SQL languages
– Suggestions indicated that if the teacher would have given more examples
and solved more exercises during the lectures, they would have gotten the
opportunity to learn more
Nawroz University – Most of them didn’t like the course • Most of them mentioned that the
teaching of the instructor was “boring”. – What have been noticed here is
that after taking the course, the students were not able to design a complete
database system, but they simply had an idea of it – Complained about
lectures in a lab room – It was suggested that the teacher and TAs should
keep in touch with the students and interact with them
32

33.  In recent years European universities have been adapting
their curricula to the new European Higher Education Area,
which implies the use of active learning methodologies.
 Paper presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the
results obtained from the use of collaborative learning in both
cross-curricula competences and subject-specific ones in the
Introduction to Databases(IDB) course.
 Foster the change the teaching methodology from lecture
centric to learner centric
Collaborative Learning Technique (Barcelona School of
Informatics.)
Carme Marti´N1, Toni Urpi´, M. Jose´ Casany, Xavier Burgue´ S, Carme Quer, M.
Elena Rodri´Guez and Alberto Abello, Improving Learning in a Database Course
Collaborative Learning Techniques (2013), International Journal of Engineering
Education ,29(4) ,1–12
33

34.  IDB is a compulsory half-year course
 60% of the topics recommended by the IEEE/ACM for databases
are covered.
 2 hours of theory/exercises
 2 hours of labs,
 RDBMS system PostgreSQL is used jointly with the Learn-SQL (Learning
Environment for Automatic Rating Notions of SQL) system, a Moodle system
extended by a new type of questionnaire that automatically corrects database
exercises and gives feedback to students.
 150 students(average)
Table 2: Topics and types of classes in the IDB course 34

35. USE OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNING TECHNIQUES
IN EXERCISES
 Collaborative learning is the instructional use of small groups
so that students work together to maximize their own and each
other’s learning.
 Four techniques were initially selected and adapted, and the
use of the technique in exercise classes.
Table 3: Collaborative learning techniques used in the IDB course 35

36. Table 4: Cross-curricula competences practiced in each
collaborative learning technique
Results : Shows that the average grades obtained by students in the 1011AS
and 1011SS were higher than those in the 0809 semesters.
36

37. INTRODUCTION TO THE PRAGMATIC TEACHING OF
DATABASE CONCEPTS
 Practical approach to illustrate set theory in terms
of diagrammatic examples and relates this to teach
SQL
 For example :
By Arjen (Community Relations Manager, Trainer, MySQL AB)
37

38.  In SQL, two types of joins exist, inner and outer. Using Venn
diagrams, joins are easily explained in a visual way.
 Queries like “which cities belong to which state” and other
similar queries, use a joining of the two tables
 SQL query for the same would be
SELECT StateName, CityName FROM States s JOIN Cities c
ON s.StateID = c.StateID WHERE StateName = 'Queensland';
 Using set theory it is
Fig 5: Inner Join of States and Cities tables
38

39.  Outer joins are typically used to find mismatches.
Like “ find out which customers have not bought a particular
product”
 SELECT StateName, CityName FROM States s LEFT JOIN
Cities c ON s.StateID = c.StateID WHERE c.StateID IS NULL;
Fig 6: Outer Join of States and Cities tables
39

40. INTERACTIVE COMPUTATIONAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS
 To teach Normalization
NORMIT:
 Developed at University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Australia, it
works
 After determination of FD’s, closure the students have to decompose
the tables until BCNF Form
 The system compares the student’s solution with ideal solution
 generated by problem solver and sends feedback,
References : Márta Czenky, The Efficiency Examination Of Teaching Of Different
Normalization Methods, International Journal of Database Management Systems (2014),
6(2),1-18.
Antonija Mitrovic, NORMIT: a Web-Enabled Tutor for Database Normalization (2002),
International Conference on Computers in Education, Vol 2, 1276 – 1280.
40

41.  E-learning tool teaching dependency theory – The system was developed by
the Fellow workers of the University of Westminster, London .
Input: Attributes of relation, determinant and dependent attributes of the FD. Then the
student can choose which normal form should the program decompose the relation.
Output: Provides the decomposed relations and signs the primary keys.
 Database normalization tool – Developed at Cornell University in 2003.
Input: Relation’s attributes and FD. Output: Signs which normal forms are violated.
Afterwards, by request the program decomposes the relation and examines if the
decomposition is lossless and dependency preserved.
 Gradiance – The system is used at Stanford University. For the verification of the
Understanding of normalization there are different worksheets in functional
dependencies, Multivalued dependencies and normalization topics. After sending
worksheet the system evaluates it and gives longer explanations on wrong answers.
 RDBNorma – This tool was developed by researchers of Vishwakarma Institute
of Technology & Pune Vidhyarthi Griha’s College of E&T. Uses FD’s in a linked
list and executes normalization up to 3NF .
41

42.  E-R diagram creation tools:
 ERWin
 Lucidchart
 Edraw
 ER-Assitant
 SchemaCrawler
42

43. ADVICE—EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM FOR TEACHING
DATABASE COURSES
 Integrated educational system named ADVICE (Automated Database
Verification with Interactive Counter Example), developed to support the
set of laboratory exercises.
 A Web-based educational system developed by University of Belgrade, Serbia.
 Developed to support Databases, the first DBMS-related course in the
curriculum of the School of Electrical Engineering.
 ADVICE, helps students to bridge the gap between DBMS theory and practice.
 The usage of ADVICE is presented through a set of lab exercises
 Developed to teach students conceptual and logical modeling, SQL, formal query
languages, and normalization.
References: Miloˇs Cvetanovic , Zaharije Radivojevic´, Vladimir Blagojevic and Miroslav
Bojovic, ADVICE-Educational System for Teaching database Courses(2011), IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, 54( 3), 398-409.
43

44.  While working on the exercises, students use the system
to access real databases, and the system provides them
with feedback about their solutions.
 From the perspective of an instructor, the system allows
easy exercise management and continual progress
monitoring.
 The key feature of ADVICE is its provision of support for
automated correctness checking in order to help students
with self-assessment and to help the instructor with
grading.
 ADVICE covers about 78% of the core topics, 30% of the
elective topics,
44

45. 45

46. An important feature of ADVICE is that the correctness checking permits active
tutoring of students, based on interactive counter examples.
The feature is based on verification algorithms for result comparison.
Another interesting feature is query visualization, which could be used in order to
explain the nonprocedural semantics of SQL queries.
Fig 7: Typical appearance of ADVICE from a student’s perspective.
46

47. Qualitative and quantitative assessment of the ADVICE system showed that
both student satisfaction and their average grade were increased.
Student satisfaction increased from “good” to “very good,” and their average
grade increased by 5.6%.
47

48. Thank You
48