OER Tools and Courses for Teaching Database Systems as Developed in the Project EILD.nrw Thomas C. Rakow 1, Heide Faeskorn-Woyke 2, Inga Marina Saatz 3 and Harm Knolle 4 1 Hochschule Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Media, Düsseldorf 2 Technische Hochschule Köln University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering Science, Gummersbach 3 Fachhochschule Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Faculty of Computer Science, Dortmund 4 Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Department of Computer Science, Sankt Augustin Abstract In the EILD.nrw project, Open Educational Resources (OER) are being developed for teaching databases. Instructors can use the tools and courses in a variety of learning scenarios. Students of computer science and application subjects learn the complete life cycle of databases. For this purpose, quizzes, interactive tools, instructional videos, and courses for learning management systems are developed and published under a Creative Commons license. Keywords 1 Database systems, OER, higher education The use of digital teaching and learning materials semester in supported self-study and work on in teaching offers potential for the design of new practical tasks for the conception, creation, and scenarios: the availability anytime and anywhere, programming of databases. the customization, especially with the individual Due to the intended use in basic courses, the speed of reception, the automatable review of content is in German. Translatability into other solutions, the traceability of use as well as the easy languages is intended, but there are no funds reproducibility [3, 4]. The content consists of available for this in the project, so the OER presentations, scripts, and tasks; the activities can be community will be approached for voluntary work. forums and chats, surveys, and tests, which are also However, learning instructions for German- enriched with gaming elements, all provided for language textbooks, for example, can only be learning management systems. mapped into other language settings with a great The EILD.nrw project has been funded by the effort. Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North For quality assurance, the learning and teaching Rhine-Westphalia since the winter semester of 2020 modules created in the project are used and as a cooperation project with the Digital University evaluated in current teaching [5]. Scaled answers are of North Rhine-Westphalia (DH.NRW) [2]. The supplemented with free text entries. The content created in this and the other projects of the anonymously submitted evaluations of the students OERContent funding line will be made available were visible to the students in the course. Due to the under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license – sharing and transparency, the students can compare their editing with attribution and passing on under the answers with other learners. The evaluation of the same conditions. The project partners from four feedback and an outlook on how it is considered are universities have years of experience in teaching also presented in the course. The quantitative databases with self-developed learning units. About information enables the assessment by the students 1,000 students can acquire knowledge every to be recorded. The information on the actual LWDA’22: Lernen, Wissen, Daten, Analysen. October 05–07, 2022, Hildesheim, Germany EMAIL: thomas.rakow@hs-duesseldorf.de (A.1); heide.faeskorn- woyke@th-koeln.de (A.2); inga.saatz@fh-dortmund.de (A.3); harm.knolle@h-brs.de (A.4) ORCID: 0000-0001-6374-9068 (A. 1); 0000-0002-7371-806X (A. 3) © 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). CEUR Wor Pr ks hop oceedi ngs ht I tp: // ceur - SSN1613- ws .or 0073 g CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org) processing time of tasks, for example, made it 6. For the area of NoSQL databases, learning possible to check the workload specifications in the modules with instructional videos, pools of module manual. Combined with qualitative questions, case studies, online exercises and feedback, improvements can be made. associated model solutions are integrated into Several tools from the life cycle of databases learning sequences in the learning such as modeling, relational data model, SQL and management system ILIAS. functionality and structure of database systems have 7. The text and image-based introduction to been developed by the project partners or are nearing data analysis presents specific problems, completion. In courses on selected subject areas, the enables users to solve a problem interactively tools are used in specific learning scenarios. and contains questions with integrated Learning units on NoSQL database systems and the feedback. analysis of large amounts of multimedia data are developed as advanced topics. Modifiability and extensibility to adapt 1. The MCT-trainer contains over 1300 didactic preparation, integrability to a learning questions on database system concepts. In environment, and free availability are essential for related quizzes, solution hints and using the tools and courses as OER. These explanations in the final evaluation enable an requirements are met using open environments understanding of the correct answers. The such as JavaScript, SQLite, Jupyter notebooks, question can be adopted to specific needs by the useability for freely available learning database operations. management systems such as Moodle and ILIAS 2. Modeling with the entity-relationship as well as SCORM, software versioning via diagram can be practiced in the ERD-trainer GitHub provisioning [7], inclusion of didactic using several application examples. The descriptions and evaluation results within courses, different notations for describing the and accessibility via the ORCA.nrw platform [6]. cardinality of relationships can be compared interactively for binary relationships. The [1] J. Kessler, M. Tschuggnall, M., G. Specht, mapping to a relational schema into the G.: RelaX: A Webbased Execution and relational schema can be done interactively in Learning Tool for Relational Algebra. In: T. the ER-mapping-trainer. Grust et al.: BTW 2019, S. 503-506. 3. A Moodle course contains an introduction Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn. to the relational data model with tutorial https://dx.doi.org/10.18420/btw2019-32. videos, reading tips and practical exercises on [2] EILD.nrw Website. https://eild.nrw. Access unary and binary operations and August 16, 2022. normalization. The tool RelaX of the [3] T.C. Rakow, H. Faeskorn-Woyke, I.M. University of Innsbruck [1] used to execute Saatz, H. Knolle: Es EILD - Anforderungen relational expressions is introduced with a an die Publikation freier Lerneinheiten screencast. The NF-trainer contains tasks for (OER) im Fach Datenbanken. Datenbank- the transfer to the first, second and third Spektrum, 2(12) 111-120. Springer-Verlag, normal form. The course contains commented Berlin 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13222- references to textbooks, evaluation results, 021-00373-z. didactic recommendations for use in teaching [4] T.C. Rakow, H. Faeskorn-Woyke: Digitale and technical framework conditions. Lehre im Fach Datenbanken. In: Meyer, H., 4. The SQL-trainer and the PL/SQL-trainer et al.: BTW 2019 - Workshopband, S. 97-98. offer an interactive learning application for Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn. SQL statements (DDL, DQL, DML) based on https://doi.org/10.18420/btw2019-ws-09. SQLite or for interactively practicing triggers, [5] T.C. Rakow, M. Focken: EILD.nrw - Die functions, and procedures. The use of Oracle Evaluation von Lehrinhalten im Fach SQLcl® (command line interpreter) is Datenbanken. In: M. Wojciechowski.: explained in a screencast. Forschungsreport 2021, S. 138-139. 5. The structure and functionality of database https://doi.org/10.20385/opus4-3648. management systems are presented with the [6] ORCA.nrw - Studium und Lehre digital serialization-trainer for synchronizing parallel unterstützt. https://orca.nrw. Access August transactions and the B-tree-animator for 16, 2022. interactive creation of an index [7] EILD.nrw GitHub repository https://github.com/EILD-nrw/.