I participated in the Database Disciplinary Commons in Computing Education project with academics from other Universities in the UK. The project was led by Sally Fincher (University of Kent) and Richard Cooper (University of Glasgow). This page is the starting point for my portfolio, which describes the module, Introduction to Database Development, which I taught during the first semester of session 2009/10.The material is organised under a set of headings, corresponding to the tabs below.

Philosophy of teaching

Portfolio materials

  • Context
  • Content
  • Instructional Design
  • Delivery
  • Assessment
  • Evaluation

Institutional context
Saltire CentreGlasgow Caledonian University was formed in 1993 with the aim of providing non-elitist, high quality education and training to a wide and diverse range of students. It is the newest of the three universities in the city of Glasgow, and has a greater focus on teaching and widening access than the older institutions. Students come from a wide range of social and educational backgrounds. The university has the advantage of a city centre location, with excellent transport links. GCU has gained a reputation for providing excellent experience for international students, who are mainly enrolled on postgraduate programmes. Lke the other Glasgow universities has a high proportion of local students on its undergraduate programmes.

Course context
My Introduction to Database Development (INTDD)module is included within a suite of programmes offered within the School of Engineering and Computing at GCU. It is part of a group of modules which are common to the first year of all computing programmes at GCU: Computing (Web Systems Development), Computing (Information Systems Development), Games Software Development, Games Design, Networking and IT Management for Business. For some of these programmes, INTDD is the first of a sequence of modules on databases, while for others it is the only time in their course that students will study databases.

The philosophy of the common first year modules was to provide a 'flavour' of a representative range of topics and roles within the industries likely to be of interest to graduates from the programmes. In addition to databases, there are modules on systems developmnet, programming, web development, computer architecture, networking, games design and, media content creation. Students enrol on a named programme, but have the opportunity to switch at the end of the first year, hopefully having then gained an insight into what is involved in their chosen path of study. The consequence of this approach is that most of these modules are short, 10 credit modules (most modules in other years of the programmes are 20 credits) which are delivered over 6 weeks. It was intended to build much of the teaching on different modules round their contribution to a common "case study" system which would emphasis how the different aspects and roles fit together. This has proved difficult to implement in practice, but the INTDD module does tie in closely with system development and programming modules in particular to emphasise the idea of a database as a vital component in a computer system. One of the lab activities (lab 4) in particular was designed to link databases with Java programming.

people

Environment
Lectures are all delivered in a large lecture theatre, M001. Labs take place in computer labs, each of which can accommodate a maximum of 20 students. A number of different labs are used, and there is some variation in the facilities available, for example projector, whiteboard. Tutorials take place in small class rooms with no student computers. Each classroom has a lecturer computer and projector.
Computer lab Lecture theatre

Artefact:
These prospectus pages give general descriptions of the computing programmes and the subjects studied within each one through the levels..

Prospectus (extract)