Use of large databases for group projects at the nexus of teaching and research
Abstract
Final year, group (capstone) projects in computing disciplines are often expected to fill multiple roles: in addition to allowing students to learn important domain-specific knowledge, they should reinforce computing and software engineering concepts and provide for the acquisition of transferable skills. For motivational and pedagogical reasons, it is clearly preferable that such projects respond to real needs, be those in research or industry. We describe two student projects based on a large repository of usage data and integrated into a course in Professional Computing. These projects fulfilled the objectives outlined above and were closely linked to the research of the first author. We suggest that similar projects based on large databases may offer a transferable paradigm for others to follow. Finally, we outline some important elements for a successful group project based on a large database.
References
[1]
Clear, T., et al., eds. ITiCSE 2001 Working Group Reports - Resources for Instructors of Capstone Courses in Computing. SIGCSE Bulletin, ed. J. Impagliazzo. Vol. 33. 2001, ACM: New York. 93--113.
[2]
Evans, H., Atkinson, M., Brown, M., Cargill, J., Crease, M., Draper, S., Gray, P. & Thomas, R. (2003). The Pervasiveness of Evolution in GRUMPS Software. Software: Practice & Experience, 33 (2), 99--120.
[3]
Gray, J. (2003) Online Science: The World Wide Telescope as a Prototype for the New Computational Science, talk at NeSC, Edinburgh, July 4, {Online} Available: <http://www.research.microsoft.com/ Gray/talks/WWT_ISC_2003.pdf> {25 Sept. 2003}.
[4]
J. Gray, A.S. Szalay, A. Thakar, P. Kunszt, C. Stoughton, D. Slutz, J. vandenBerg (2002) Data Mining the SDSS SkyServer Database <http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?tr_id=543>. Distributed Data & Structures 4: Records of the 4th International Meeting, pp 189--210.
[5]
Golab, L. & Ozsu, M.T. (2003) Issues in data stream management. SIGMOD Record, 32 (22), 5--14, June.
[6]
Karahasanovic, A., Fjuk, A., Sjoberg, D. Thomas, R. (2004) A Controlled Experiment to Evaluate the Reactivity and Usefulness of Data Collection with the Think-Aloud Tool versus Classical Think-Aloud Method. IRMA 2004 Conference, New Orleans, USA, May 23-6
[7]
Kearns, R., Shead, S., Fekete, A. (1997) A Teaching System for SQL. Australasian Computer Science Education ACSE'97, ACM Press (1997) 224--231.
[8]
Mitrovic, A. (1998) Learning SQL with a Computerized Tutor. SIGCSE Bulletin 30 (1), 307--311.
[9]
Dan Orzech (2003), Rapidly Falling Storage Costs Mean Bigger Databases, New Applications available online at http://www.cioupdate.com/trends/article.php/2217351
[10]
Szalay, A. S., Gray, J., Thakar, A. R., Kunszt, P. Z., Malik, T., Raddick, J., Stoughton, C., VanderBerg, J. (2001) The SDSS SkyServer - Public Access to the Sloan Digital Sky Server Data. ACM SIGMOD 2002, MSR-TR-2001-104
[11]
Thomas, R.C., Kennedy, G.E., Draper, S.D., Mancy, R., Crease, M., Evans, H. & Gray, P.D. (2003) Generic usage monitoring of programming students. ASCILITE 2003 Conference, Adelaide, 7-10 December, 715-9
[12]
Thomas, Richard C. (1998) Long term human-computer interaction. Springer Verlag.
[13]
The GRUMPS Research Project. {Online}. Available: http://grumps.dcs.gla.ac.uk {16th June 2003}.
[14]
PC307 Professional Computing <http://undergraduate.csse.uwa.edu.au/units/230.307/> 05Nov03.
[15]
Skyserver online at http://skyserver.sdss.org
[16]
Transact-SQL Overview http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/tsqlref/ts_tsqlcon_6lyk.asp Accessed 17Aug03
Index Terms
- Use of large databases for group projects at the nexus of teaching and research
Recommendations
Use of large databases for group projects at the nexus of teaching and research
ITiCSE '04: Proceedings of the 9th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science educationFinal year, group (capstone) projects in computing disciplines are often expected to fill multiple roles: in addition to allowing students to learn important domain-specific knowledge, they should reinforce computing and software engineering concepts ...
Where writing and rhetoric meet multimedia production designing an effective, interdisciplinary capstone experience
CITC5 '04: Proceedings of the 5th conference on Information technology educationThe Multimedia Authoring minor capstone course will be a collaborative effort, co-taught by two faculty members; one in the English department and one in the Computing Sciences department. Students will be asked to develop an interactive multimedia ...
Academics' experience of teaching Open Ended Group Projects: A phenomenographic study
2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)An Open Ended Group Project (OEGP) is a distinguishable pedagogical tool, used by teachers in computing, engineering, and information technology courses. The tool contributes to the development of ‘soft’ skills essential for students' future ...
Comments
Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
June 2004296 pagesISBN:1581138369DOI:10.1145/1007996- Conference Chair:
- Roger Boyle,
- Program Chairs:
- Martyn Clark,
- Amruth Kumar
Copyright © 2004 ACM.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 28 June 2004
Published in SIGCSE Volume 36, Issue 3
Check for updates
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Article
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- View Citations4Total Citations
- 365Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)6
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 09 Nov 2024
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
Get Access
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign in