Self - instructive course on principles of databases. In: Sharing good practices : e-learning

The self-instructive course on Principles of Databases is offered in distance education and covers the regular module of ITC’s degree programs. An important and intended side-effect of the self-instructive approach is the reduction of staff input effort during the course run. A careful course design, with self-explanatory content, should enable students to behave self-instructively during their study.The main learning objective is to make the students understand the logic and principles of database use more than to teach how to operate on a database in a certain database management system (like Microsoft Access). Exercises are in part shaped as educational applets, which enable the student to enter the answer and receive explanatory feedback on every part of the answer. To build such educational applets (which can 'understand ' mathematical expressions and formulas, and can also provide translation into SQL syntax) has been one of the biggest challenges in the design of our distance education course on principles of databases.The presented course applies an instructional course design using the ICARE system. Learning objects are self-instructional, allowing students to proceed at their own pace, with and extensive direct feedback for (self-)assessment based on results obtained. The feedback provides the necessary repetition, or possibly advice for further study