Creating an Online Interactive Tutorial to Assist Teachers for Literature review

Creating an Online Interactive Tutorial to Assist Teachers for Tutoring the A-Level computing Curriculum of Database Concepts - Literature review Example Furthermore, the style and strategy of teaching changes by the Professors according to the need of the syllabus of diverse courses and assessment examination transforms as well (Blue Tutors, 2010). Particularly from the different courses of the ‘A’ level, Computer Science is one of the courses that has absolutely diverse syllabus of the other courses, moreover, there are diverse methods of assessment criteria of computer science subjects. The database design concepts are the core part of the computer science subject as they are more commonly used in our professional life. Mainly, the document discuses Database Design, a topic of computer science chosen for development of an Online Interactive Tutorial to assist the teachers for tutoring the A Level computing curriculum of Database concepts. The document discusses the reasons for selection of topics, the strategies that are undertaken by the teachers to teach the computer courses, the syllabus and assessment criteria carr ied out by AQA (past examination paper and reports), the difficulties faced by students and common mistakes by the students in exams. The document presents the reviews on the traditional and existing methods to teach the topic of Database Design, identifies the problems in the existing teaching methods, specific problematic areas for students in database modelling, the requirement specifications for development of Online Tutorial to assist the teachers to educate the students regarding the database concepts. The main objective of the document is to identify a new teaching mechanism that would help the teachers to instruct the learners regarding the computer science topic of the database design subject in an effective manner. So that the students would be able recognize and categorize their mistakes through the use of the tutorial. Topic Selection The Database concepts are a vital part of the computing science curriculum. A database can only be useful if it has been developed on a go od data model. A database model is a graphical representation of the user requirement for the development of the database and mapping the graphical form of a combination of tables employed in a physical database system. In terms of teaching, the database normalisation is one of the difficult and critical topics in the database concepts for the students of ‘A’ level. The most of the problems of poor data quality arise as the result of inappropriate design include redundant data and anomalies. The major goals of a normalized database design include elimination of redundant and inconsistent data, uncomplicated representation of information, elimination of insert, update and delete anomalies. Due to the fact, the topic of database normalisation becomes the most critical topic in the database design because the quality of data is dependent on the quality of database normalisation process (Mannino, 2006). The process of database normalisation is difficult not only for the stu dents of ‘A’ level, but the teachers also face difficulties to instruct the different normalisation forms. The students understand the underlying concepts of the normalisation process including the 1NF, 2NF, 3NF, 4NF and 5NF, however, when they have been given a scenario mostly students mess up with implementing and converting the database tables from one Normal form to another. Usually the students