Tools for supporting the teaching and learning of data modelling
Peter Thomas, Kevin Waugh, Neil Smith · 2007
Abstract: This paper describes three software tools that have been developed to help students learn to produce entity-relationship diagrams (ERDs) in the context of data modelling. The primary tool, called the Exerciser, presents a student with a series of questions and enables the student to produce ERDs that represent the data requirements for the scenarios embedded in the questions. The Exerciser marks each attempt at a diagram and provides several feedback perspectives on the student’s answer. The questions, specimen solutions and feedback are built using a tool (the Tutor Tool) which is also described. Both the Exerciser and the Tutor Tool incorporate a purpose-built entity-relationship diagramming tool known as SimpleDraw. The Exerciser has been evaluated and the results of the evaluation are presented. This feedback shows that the tool was found to be very useful and has provided information on which to base a revised version with improved usability. An Entity-Relationship diagram (ERD) is a graphical notation often used to represent a high-level model of data and their relationships that are to be recorded by a database. An entity represents a discrete type of data item and is named as in: a book, an employee, a sound, or a chemical. A relationship captures how two or more entities are related to one another. The tools described in this paper are applications of two strands of research: the machine interpretation of diagrams