Adapting Problem-Based Learning to Database Courses in the Digital Age

Over the course of the last two decades, the United States government has pursued a program of democratizing data. Public services have been transformed into data-driven enterprises. This enthusiasm for data collection, analysis and public reporting has important consequences for computing education. This chapter outlines a pedagogical strategy for educating citizens in the competent and responsible use of the data currently defining our national agenda. Specifically the authors argue that problem-based learning (PBL) provides a strong framework for introducing database concepts to a broad range of students. The design of databases constitutes complex problems with multiple solutions. Database problems are necessarily interdisciplinary involving both problem domain and technical expertise. Moreover, since databases support some real-world objective, problems in database design are inherently authentic and contextualized. These properties hold consistently across a range of problem types. Thus, common problems in the database domain are aligned with PBL definitions of good problems.