Re-design of Course Curriculum and Students' Satisfaction

Patrizia Poščić, Department of informatics-University of / Rijeka, ([email protected]) Danijela Jakšić, Department of informatics-/ Rijeka, Croatia ([email protected]) Department of Informatics, University of Rijeka Radmile Matejčić 2, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia http://www.inf.uniri.hr About course

• DB course is held at the second year of an undergraduate study of informatics

• DB course continues on an Introduction to databases (IDB) course, which covers: – all the fundamental database related topics, – early database development, – relational theory and relational algebra,

3 About Database course

– normalization, – relational database management systems – practical work in SQL

• The course consists of theoretical lectures and practical exercises on the computer

4 Database course

• The main objectives are to: – introduce students to various types of databases (, distributed, NoSQL, cloud, analytical/data warehouses, etc.) – introduce students to database security and administration aspects – train students to independently build business applications based on relational databases, using rapid application development (RAD) tools

5 Lectures (before 2014)

• Before 2014 lectures were organized: – Traditional lectures in classroom for more than half of the semester – For the rest time of the semester students worked in pairs or small groups (up to 4 students) on a essay with preferred topic • something in the area of multimedia databases, distributed databases, NoSQL databases, cloud databases, analytical databases/data warehouses, etc.

6

Lectures (before 2014)

• Problems: – boring lectures, – minimum of interaction, – no motivation, – ‘no good’ energy in the classroom.

7

Lectures (after 2014)

• After 2014 we changed: – Theoretical lectures are substituted with 5 team game quizzes (5 team quiz competitions) – No face-to-face lectures, except on 5 quiz dates – 5 quiz topics: • multimedia databases, • database security, • NoSQL databases, • data warehousing, • cloud computing 8

Lectures (after 2014)

• The goal was to: – make the lectures more interactive, competitive and fun – motivate students for studying and achieving better grades – force students to become more independent – promote teamwork and cooperation – better prepare students for future work

9

Lectures (after 2014)

• Teams of 4 students • For every quiz students have 2-3 weeks to prepare • On the quiz date we all meet in the classrom • first we prepared powerpoint presentations with questions – two main teams for that quiz answered the questions – if they both didn't answer correctly, other teams also had a chance to answer (principle of rising the hand) • Problems: – we often couldn't see who was first, and students were not satisfied – students learn only for the topic where they are one of the two main teams

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Lectures (in 2018)

• Quizzes are implemented in the Kahoot (https://kahoot.it/) • All questions are multiple choice • Students join quiz and answer questions with their smartphones – 1 smartphone per team • For each question 5 seconds for team talk and 10 seconds choosing the answer (15 seconds in total) • Correct answer = 1 point, Incorrect answer = -1 point, No answer = 0 points • All teams answer all quiz questions • At the end of the semester their quiz points are translated into course points – there is a translation scale 11 Lectures (in 2018)

Kahoot desktop admin interface – all quizzes 12

Lectures (in 2018)

Kahoot desktop admin interface – one of the quizzes 13

Lectures (in 2018)

Kahoot - joining the quiz 14

Grade results

2018 11 6 23 23 28

2017 10 17 19 15 24

2016 9 12 21 23 28 Grade 1

Grade 2 2015 11 14 21 18 25

Year Grade 3

Grade 4

2014 20 10 16 7 6 Grade 5

2013 5 10 12 10 12

2012 6 5 9 9 14

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Number of students

15 Grade results (in %)

Students' grades 30,8% 25,3% 2018 25,3% 6,6% 12,1%

28,2% 17,6% 2017 22,4% 20,0% 11,8%

30,1% 24,7% 2016 22,6% 12,9% 9,7%

28,1% 20,2% 2015 23,6%

Year 15,7% 12,4%

10,2% 11,9% 2014 27,1% 16,9% 33,9%

24,5% 20,4% 2013 24,5% 20,4% 10,2%

32,6% 20,9% 2012 20,9% 11,6% 14,0%

0,0% 5,0% 10,0% 15,0% 20,0% 25,0% 30,0% 35,0% 40,0% Percentage of students

Grade 5 Grade 4 Grade 3 Grade 2 Grade 1 16 Satisfaction results

• At the end of semester students filled in a short questionnaire about their satisfaction with the course • We are satisfied with results  Students’ satisfaction

Grade 5

Grade 4

2018 Grade 3 2017 2016 Grade 2 2015

Grade 1

0 20 40 60 80 Number of students 17 Satisfaction results (in %)

Students' satisfaction

79,1% 68,2% Grade 5 67,7% 75,3%

17,6% Grade 4 or 5 Grade 4 24,7% 18,3% 14,6% 2018 3,3% Grade 3 7,1% 2017 12,9% 6,7% 2016 0,0% Grade 2 0,0% 2015 0,0% 1,1% 80,0% 85,0% 90,0% 95,0% 100,0% 0,0% Grade 1 0,0% 1,1% 2,2%

0,0% 20,0% 40,0% 60,0% 80,0% 100,0%

2018 2017 2016 2015

18 Exercises

• In the exercises students can learn: – how to build standalone database and business application based on the relational and entity-relationship data model in rapid application development tool – at the end of the semester, students are required to develop their own application based on a relational database – final exam

19 Exercises

Example of entity- relationship model

20 Exercises

Example of business application created during practical exercises

21 Conclusion

• The students' reaction was positive to the changes we introduced in lectures • Their satisfaction ratings are very high • They are motivated for coming to lectures • There are some technical issues to be solved • We will try to find out some better quiz tool • We will continue to work on improvement

22 Thank You for your attention!