Online Interactive Tutorial to Assist the Teachers - Literature review Example

?Introduction Studies have proven that there are many reasons for the facing difficulties and get fail in especially in ‘A’ levels. From themany reasons and the problems of the students studying in ‘A’ levels, one problem is a jump to a difficult and different level of education from ‘General Certificate of Education 'Ordinary' Level Examination’ (GCE 'O' Level or the 'O' levels) or same level of students. It is obvious as the students are studying, answering and being assessed by examination in meticulous way and according to the 'O' level. However, as they reach to the ‘A’ level, the courses become more difficult and have to be taught in more depth and details. Furthermore, the style and strategy of teaching changes by the Professors according to the need of the syllabus of diverse courses and assessment examination transforms as well (Blue Tutors, 2010). Particularly from the different courses of the ‘A’ level, Computer Science is one of the courses that has absolutely diverse syllabus of the other courses, moreover, there are diverse methods of assessment criteria of computer science subjects. The database design concepts are the core part of the computer science subject as they are more commonly used in our professional life. Mainly, the document discuses Database Design, a topic of computer science chosen for development of an Online Interactive Tutorial to assist the teachers for tutoring the A Level computing curriculum of Database concepts. The document discusses the reasons for selection of topics, the strategies that are undertaken by the teachers to teach the computer courses, the syllabus and assessment criteria carried out by AQA (past examination paper and reports), the difficulties faced by students and common mistakes by the students in exams. The document presents the reviews on the traditional and existing methods to teach the topic of Database Design, identifies the problems in the existing teaching methods, specific problematic areas for students in database modelling, the requirement specifications for development of Online Tutorial to assist the teachers to educate the students regarding the database concepts. The main objective of the document is to identify a new teaching mechanism that would help the teachers to instruct the learners regarding the computer science topic of the database design subject in an effective manner. So that the students would be able recognize and categorize their mistakes through the use of the tutorial. Topic Selection The Database concepts are a vital part of the computing science curriculum. A database can only be useful if it has been developed on a good data model. A database model is a graphical representation of the user requirement for the development of the database and mapping the graphical form of a combination of tables employed in a physical database system. In terms of teaching, the database normalisation is one of the difficult and critical topics in the database concepts for the students of ‘A’ level. The most of the problems of poor data quality arise as the result of inappropriate design include redundant data and anomalies. The major goals of a normalized database design include elimination of redundant and inconsistent data, uncomplicated representation of information, elimination of insert, update and delete anomalies. Due to the fact, the topic of database normalisation becomes the most critical topic in the database design because the quality of data is dependent on the quality of database normalisation process (Mannino, 2006). The process of database normalisation is difficult not only for the students of ‘A’ level, but the teachers also face difficulties to instruct the different normalisation forms. The students understand the underlying concepts of the normalisation process including the 1NF, 2NF, 3NF, 4NF and 5NF, however, when they have been given a scenario mostly students mess up with implementing and converting the database tables from one Normal form to another. Usually the students make common mistakes in the process of designing the database including identification of entities (to create database tables), considering attributes as entities (unable to identify attributes of the entities), development of relationships between the tables. Moreover, they face difficulties in removing transitive dependencies, isolating independent multiple relationships and ensuring data integrity. Eventually, the students do not able to avoid anomalies and data redundancy by not implementing correctly the normalization process. Furthermore, a number of database concepts and methods usually are described imprecisely or vaguely in course books that becomes difficult for students including methods to represent multi-valued attributes in schema alone, imprecise definition of terms, tables, relations, and first normal form, difficult ways of identifying the candidate key, insertion and deletion anomalies (Philip, 2007). Keeping in view the facts, it is significantly indispensable to develop an automated tutorial free of the errors for betterment, effectiveness and uncomplicatedness understanding of the database concepts for the learners. Teaching Strategies and Assessment Criteria Currently sundry teaching methods are being used to educate the students of A level, however, one of the main or commonly employed traditional methods is a lecture provided by the Professor from a book through PowerPoint presentations, their supervision on practical work, feedback & monitoring of the students, assessment and examination of the students to reach higher schooling levels. It is pertinent to mention here that a study at University of Karachi, Pakistan by Dr. Shahida Sajjad, revealed that lecture method is one the best methods of schooling the students. The study was completed after interviewing two hundred and twenty (220) students from eleven (11) diverse educational disciplines. Some of the reasons mentioned by the students include: the teacher gives lecture related to the topic (precisely) in simple and understandable language and provides notes as well which saves time. The second rated method in the study is the group discussion as more students and teachers participate in the discussion, the learning becomes more effective, develops inventiveness among learners etc. (Sajjad, n.d.). Usually, the teachers develop the notes from the book for providing those to the students, however, as per the study of Phillip mentioned above the books usually contain imprecise and vague terms’ definitions, algorithms, database concepts etc. Therefore, it would be necessary for the teachers to not only rely on the books; they need to research to teach the courses especially the database concepts. Furthermore, academic specialists are working to explore special educational needs (SEN) to educate the students. They have identified approaches and strategies including: Communication and Interaction, Cognition and Learning, Behaviour, Emotional and Social Development, Sensory or Physical. These approaches are used for raising the level of the students not only in academia but also help to develop emotional intelligence, social characteristics and behavioural abilities in the students. It is significant to mention here that the strategies and approaches mentioned above are specifically developed for all pupils from grade I to onwards and definite have potential in a number of situations/circumstances include: development of critical thinking skills, responding to learning styles and multiple intelligences, utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in learning, eavesdropping, and responding to the learners’ views, ideas, issues and mistakes (Devis, Florian, 2004). Keeping in view the above study, it would be worthwhile to develop an automated tutorial for learning of database concepts especially the database normalisation. It is really important to emphasise that the document caters only the students of ‘A’ level, therefore, the strategies and approaches for teaching and considering them for the development of the tutorial to assist learning of database concepts. Moreover, it has the same importance to review assessment criteria of the A level for the database subjects, so that the similar concepts may be included in the development of the tutorial. In order to assess the subjects related to computer science, one of the most common examination boards is Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) in the United Kingdom. The AQA examination board has identified certain objectives of the A level assessments include: knowledge and understanding of the subject, the particular skills that needs to be developed after studying a specific subject, and the quality of expressing the topic through writing or Quality of Written Communication (QWC). The syllabus of AQA examination board for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) – Database Management Concepts include: Introduction to Database and types, Data Modelling including Entity Relationship Diagrams, Database Normalisation, and Database Management System. In total four (4) books are included in the syllabus of the course titled Database Management Concepts that are McWeeney - A205 Pages 11 – 26, Mott & Leeming - Chapter 17, Doyle - Chapter 5 & Pages 258-272 and Heathcote - Chapters 55-57. The examination paper of the AQA board comprises of theoretical as well as practical diagrams based on diverse scenarios. Furthermore, scenarios along with their database design solutions are given and the students need to find out errors or normalising the database design solution. Moreover, in order to assess the knowledge of E-R diagrams scenarios or half of the diagram is given and the students have to complete the diagram. Method and Product Review It is imperative to refer the traditional method of teaching as discussed earlier, there are certain advantages of teaching by giving lectures through PowerPoint presentation including the trainer specifically determines the goals, course contents, tempo, organization and way of a topic/course presentation depending upon the grip and understanding of students, the trainers can awaken attention and interest in a subject, the trainers can complement and elucidate the course text. Moreover, the trainers review the students’ work, the student has to be assessed and feedback is provided to them from the trainers to clarify their mistakes (University of Wisconsin System, 2006). Despite, the traditional methods of teaching, there are some products that assist to learn database normalisation by utilising Information and Communication Technology (ICT) include: Animated Database Courseware, Normalisation Practice, and PWN ICT Computing. In order to get clarification of these products it is momentous to review the working on how these products are beneficial for the students to learn database normalisation and the issues with these products. In the first product tiled Animated Database Courseware developed by Dr. Meg C. Murray in 2007, the product was funded by NSF. In this product a tutorial (specific to the database normalisation) has been developed in order to educate the student/learner briefly regarding the basic concepts of database normalisation by using a single example. Furthermore, to practice the database normalisation five (5) different scenarios are given along with the required attributes and functional dependencies. The scenarios include a database of employees to keep the records of their projects and managers, a database of a police station to track record of the thefts, vehicles and suspected thief/thieves, a database of company having customers require catering service and their balance payment, etc. The practitioner/learner has to select the attributes from the single given table to create more tables to normalise the database by removing functional dependencies. Usually, the learner receives three types of errors include: too many tables created, too few tables created, and tables are not in 3NF. Moreover, a web page of help for using the product is also given on the website. The students can get benefits first getting information from the tutorial and then practicing on diverse scenarios to normalising the database (Murray, 2007). The second product has been developed by the Glendale Community College of Arizona. In this product, there are seven (7) multiple choice questions are given regarding database normalisation. Each question depicts a scenario of different tables and attributes. The student has to find out the normal form (0NF, 1NF, 2NF, 3NF) of the each given scenario. On pressing the wrong normal form button, the system replies a specific reason of why the answer is incorrect. Moreover, if the students correctly answer the question, the system specifies the rationale and explains the particular scenario. The product just comprises the multiple choice questions along with rationale answering. It does not contain development practice of Entity Relationship Diagrams and/or normalising the database (Sylvester, 2012). To use of Information and Communication Technology, the third product describes the syllabus of ‘Computing’ subject prescribed by the AQA examination board by PWN ICT Computing. An excel sheet has been provided on the website to facilitate the users to know not only the syllabus but they can also review what they have been taught in the class and what’s coming next (Hamflett, 2011). Problems in Methods In the words of Clement Stone that to every advantage there is a corresponding disadvantage. Keeping in view the quote, there are certain problems in teaching through the book, the traditional method of teaching and the products that have been discussed earlier. It has been found in a study that especially in the course books related to the database management system that the definition of certain main terms and concepts are described distantly and hazily. Moreover, the advance topics of database which include formal algorithms to convert an un-normalised form to normalised relation has been illustrated and provided diversely in the different books. Ultimately, these algorithms differentiate on performances, quality of outputs and different results as well on the same order of inputs provided to them. The problems of teaching by the traditional method include: the students become passive to a certain extent than an active part, the method only encourages one way communication, the learning of the students are directly proportional to the knowledge, skills and experiences of the tutors, the teachers need to be trained or must have excellent writing and verbal communication skills, and the students may require a substantial unguided time despite schooling in the class to understand the lecture/topic. These problems may hinder the students from learning; moreover, the trainer has to make a considerable effort to know the problems of the students and their understanding of the topic devoid of vocal advice. Moreover, the teachers and students usually based their studies from the book only, which might be leading them to conceive erroneous knowledge or information (University of Wisconsin System, 2006). Precisely, the aim of the document is facilitating to develop a tutorial to learn database normalisation with the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Therefore, it is worthwhile to find out the problems of the products or tutorials that have been discussed above. Moreover, it has also been discussed in the paper that the students find difficulties in identifying the entities, their relationships and attributes. The tutorial of the Animated Database Courseware does not cover this functionality to assist the learners to get understandings on how to identify and map the real world entities, their characteristics into the Entity Relationship Diagrams. Moreover, while practicing the normalisation process from the tutorial, the messages of errors received by the learners are vague and unclear. These error messages should be as much precise that the learners can be able to find out their exact mistake and effective learn through the tutorial. Requirement Specification The methodology for developing a database design has three (3) main phases include: Conceptual database design, Logical database design and Physical database design. The logical database design phase is the most critical phase in which the database designer or students can avoid faulty data by removing redundancies and anomalies in the design of the database by applying database normalisation process (Elmasri, Navathe. 2004). Therefore, I would specify and analyze the requirements for the development of logical database design with main emphases on the database normalisation. The tutorial needs to be developed keeping in view the problems faced by the students of ‘A’ level while learning database normalisation. Moreover, the tutorial would also cater the particular problems of the teachers on the topic. There would be two parts of the tutorial; the first part contains the researched based contents to clarify the students’ basic and advanced concepts regarding the topic. Moreover, the second part would allow the students to practice normalising the database based on different scenarios. The students would be given diverse word based scenarios; initially the students need to identify the entities and attributes from the scenarios. After identification, the students would create tables and also determine the relationship between the tables after identifying the Primary and Foreign Key. Then the student would be asked to apply the rules of 1NF along with descriptive information of 1NF, the 2NF and 3NF rules to develop the database normalised till 3rd Normal Form. Overall, the system would review all the working of the student at each step. The student would be informed by a specific and precise error message according to the mistake made by the student. The main objective for the provision of specific error message is to make students understand and learn through the mistakes made by him. The contents of the first part of the tutorial would be in accordance to the syllabus provided by the AQA examination board for the ‘A’ level. A research would be conducted on the contents/syllabus of the AQA board, so that the students would be provided precise and accurate information about the relevant topics on the subject. Moreover, the format of both parts of the tutorial would be according to the examination papers’ format, as discussed earlier in the document. So that a student of ‘A’ level having AQA examination board can learn the course of Information and Communication Technology – databases from the tutorial easily and effectively. The potential users of the application (tutorial) are students of ‘A’ level want a user friendly interface so that they can navigate through the application easily. The users of the application should be informed accordingly through the interface regarding what is going on in the application. The interface elements, contents, etc. of the application should be familiar to the users; consistent and appropriate standards should be applied to the interface, so that the users would recognise the elements rather than; they recall the elements. The interface of the application should contain phrases or terms that are recognizable and memorable to the students of ‘A’ level rather than the system/application oriented terms. A step wise guidance documentation or help link would be provided in the application for tutoring the students on how to use the application (Nielsen, 2005). . Reference List Blue Tutors, 2010. Bridging the Gap Between GCSEs, A-levels and Degree Level Study. [online] Available at: [Accessed 7 September 2012] Devis, P., and Florian, L. (2004). Teaching Strategies and Approaches for Pupils with Special Educational Needs: A Scoping Study. Department for Education and Skills Mannino, M.V., 2006. Database Design, Application Development, and Administration (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill, NJ. pp. 38-123. Philip, C., 2007. Teaching Database Modelling and Design: Areas of Confusion and Helpful Hints. Journal of Information Technology Education. The University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh, USA Connolly, T.M., 2008. Database Systems: A Practical Approach to Design, Implementation and Management (4th ed.). Pearson Education India. pp. 438-470. Sajjad, S., n.d. Effective Teaching Methods at Higher Education Level. Department of Special Education. University of Karachi, Pakistan Sylvester, T., 2012. Database Normalisation. [online] Available at: [Accessed 9 September 2012] Murray, C., 2007. Animated Database Courseware. [online] Available at: [Accessed 9 September 2012] Hamflett, A., 2011. PWN ICT Computing. [online] Available at: [Accessed 9 September 2012] The University of Wisconsin System, 2006. Advantages and Disadvantages of the Traditional Lecture Method. [online] Available at: [Accessed 10 September 2012] Stone, C., n.d. Advantage and Disadvantage. [online] Available at: [Accessed 10 September 2012] Elmasri, R., and Navathe, B. S., 2004. Fundamentals of Database Systems. Addison Wesley. pp. 58-97. Nielsen, J., 2005. Ten Usability Heuristics. [online] Available at: [Accessed 11 September 2012] AQA, 2012. A-Level Computing. [online] Available at: [Accessed 7 September 2012] Kennedy, D., 2000. Database Design and the Reality of Normalisation. Proceedings of NACCQ Wellington, New Zealand Read More