Course content

What can you expect in the course? What content will be covered?
You can get a brief overview in the video above.

Structure of the course:

The MOOC is divided into several lessons - that's 8 adventurous steps into the world of relational databases:

Lesson 1: Overview of the MOOC's goals, content, and working methods.
Lesson 2: Introduction to the world of databases
Lesson 3: Domain analysis and conceptual design (semantic data model)
Lesson 4: Design of a relational database (transformation to the relational model)
Lesson 5: Introduction to SQL and creating a database with SQL
Lesson 6: Simple queries with SQL
Lesson 7: More complex queries with SQL (joins, grouping, aggregation)
Lesson 8: Complex queries with SQL II (subqueries)

Note: The above learning time per lesson is estimated and results if all topics and in-depth examples (tasks) are worked through completely in the lessons. With appropriate prior knowledge, this can be significantly shortened. It is also possible to only take the course from lesson 5 or 6 (SQL). In this case, however, no certificate of attendance can be provided.

Further note: This course will take place for the first time in summer 2023 and serves to test the developed materials. We are happy to receive feedback. The experiences will be evaluated and the course will be further developed and expanded in the following. Therefore, this course also has an end date (January 2024) and will later be replaced by a new, revised version.

Learning goals

• Know the characteristics, architecture and data models of database systems.
• Be able to list phases of database development and briefly describe the necessary steps
• Be able to design a database conceptually (using UML class diagrams)
• Being able to derive a relation model from the database design
• Know the features of SQL, its command categories and the advantage of standardization
• Be able to set up a database on a relational database system (using SQL)
• Be able to query information from individual tables using SQL
• Be able to query information by joining multiple tables, group and aggregate data (calculate max, min, average)
• Be able to create simple and correlated subqueries (subqueries)

Prerequisites

No special prior knowledge is required for this course. This excludes ordinary computer skills, as well as related software (including downloading and installing software) and using web applications.

Course schedule

Each lesson starts by outlining the key content that will be covered in the lesson and questions that can be answered after the lesson is complete. If we suggest an exercise environment in a lesson, there is also detailed information about it before things get started. Depending on the scope, a lesson consists of one or more topics.

In this MOOC, we follow a particularly applied learning approach (in cooperation with police department 42). Therefore, topics usually start with a practical question, which is intended as a challenge and should be able to be solved after working through the topic. If the necessary competencies are already available due to previous experience, this will become clear already at this point.

For each topic, we offer learning objects that convey basic knowledge about a topic (what I should know about the topic) or show the application of this basic knowledge by means of examples (application examples) and also tasks for applying what has been learned. These can be short videos (with characters from our police department 42), texts or audios. The order of the learning objects is technically sequential, but can be consumed as needed.

Each lesson concludes with a lesson quiz. 75% of the required points are necessary for the positive completion of the lesson (and the certificate of participation at the end).

For actively participating in the course you will receive an automatic certificate which includes your username, the course name as well as the completed lessons. We want to point out that this certificate merely confirms that the user answered at least 75% of the self-assessment questions correctly.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons - 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) University of Klagenfurt.