Abstract
Several educational studies have argued for the contextualization of assignments, i.e., for providing a context or a story instead of an abstract or symbolic problem statement. Such contextualization may have beneficial effects such as higher student engagement and lower dropout rates. In the domain of database education, textbooks and educators typically provide an example database for context. These are then used to introduce key concepts related to database design, and to illustrate querying. However, it remains unstudied what kinds of database contexts are engaging for novices. In this paper, we study which aspects of database domain and complexity students find engaging through student reflections on a database creation assignment. We identify six factors regarding engaging domains, and five factors for engaging complexity. The main factor for domain-related engagement was Personal interest, the main factor for complexity engagement was Matching information requirements. Our findings can help database educators and book authors to design engaging exercise databases targeted for novices.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | SIGCSE 2023 - Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education |
Place of Publication | New York |
Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) |
Pages | 122-128 |
Number of pages | 7 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-1-4503-9431-4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Event | 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2023 - Toronto, Canada Duration: 15 Mar 2023 → 18 Mar 2023 |
Conference
Conference | 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2023 |
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Country/Territory | Canada |
City | Toronto |
Period | 15/03/23 → 18/03/23 |
Keywords
- context
- database
- design
- education
- engagement