The Database Disciplinary Commons

2010

The University Context

Staffordshire University is a large, post '92 university with campuses in the city of Stoke on Trent and on the outskirts of the nearby county town of Stafford. Regeneration is now taking place in Stoke, which is one of the most deprived areas of England, and the university is part of this process. Staffordshire University has links with a large number of UK and overseas institutions.

Database teaching is carried out by staff from the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology, mainly on the Stafford campus. There are over 4,000 students on Stafford Campus and about 300 of these students are final year computing students. The Faculty teaching philosophy is 'Practical Scholarship' - concepts and theory balanced with real world skills.

The Teaching Context

Database teaching at Stafford campus is team based. I am one of the 3 core members of the database team and additional support is provided as needed by other members of staff. Database is taught at levels ranging from HND to Masters and the team is actively involved in PhD research. The faculty 'practical scholarship' approach is translated into an emphasis on providing a solid grounding in database principles, on ensuring that teaching and practice remains current and in encouraging students, particularly in the final year of undergraduate study and at masters' level, to explore the subject and go beyond the taught material.

All the team members have relevant industrial and/or public sector experience. We work closely together, sharing resources and expertise and there is a good mutual support structure - and sense of humour. The Management of Database Systems module is delivered by myself and another member of the core database team, Euan Wilson.

Teaching takes place in purpose built lecture theatres and two x 20 machine specialist labs. Software used includes a networked version of Oracle 10g, SQL Server Enterprise Edition 2008 with admin rights in a virtual environment and supporting tools such as Netbeans.

The Curriculum Context

The Management of Database Systems (MDS) module is an honours final year (Level H) computing option module. MDS was developed in 2008/2009 to introduce a research element into database teaching and to complement the practical focus of the companion Level H module, Advanced Database Systems. MDS was delivered for the second time in the academic year 2009/2010. One of the reasons that this module was nominated for the Database Commons project was that we wanted to review the experience of delivering the module. The curriculum diagram shows how MDS fits into the overall database undergraduate curriculum.

The Student Context

In the 2 years that MDS has run, there have been roughly 33 students for each delivery. MDS is taken by 2 distinct cohorts of students.

The UK cohort: between 15 -17 UK students take MDS. All these students have taken as a minimum a level 2 database design and development module and the majority have taken the first semester LH module Advanced Database Systems.

The German cohort: about 15 -18 students from the Berufsakademie Stuttgart spend the second semester at Staffordshire and take the MDS module. The Stuttgart curriculum requires these students to study database management as well as database security and performance and this influenced the design of MDS.

The majority of students taking MDS have had relevant industrial experience - most of the UK cohort has completed an industrial placement and the Stuttgart students complete a work based degree. The placement/work based experience means that students typically have real life experience of working with enterprise databases and are able to contribute to the module as database users rather than students.

Personal Context

There is a story about a professor who after using the same lecture notes for 20 years, discovered that the students did not understand them. The bit that catches my attention, is the idea of using the same lecture notes for 20 years. Some database elements have remained fairly constant since the early days of relational database development but in some ways databases have evolved beyond recognition. The MDS module was developed to allow us to introduce students to new developments in database technologies and to try out new approaches. The aim is that the module will constantly evolve and provide a challenge to staff as well as students.