A Critical Evaluation of Database Textbooks, Curriculum and Educational Outcomes
Roy Morien · 2006
Thirty year’s experience in the Information Systems and Technology (IST) industry, including 20 years teaching IS subjects, such as database design, have convinced me that IST education is not done well. Whether this manifests itself as poor teaching, or by poor learning, is a moot point, but the outcome seems to be the same. Graduates venture out into the professional world apparently poorly equipped both technically and managerially. Pragmatic education, devoid of theory, principle or industry history, is common. This is demonstrated by the many horror stories that abound, especially about poor database design. Given that databases are the central focus and foundation of most business systems, and a major resource in both time and effort to develop and maintain, database education needs to be of the highest order of relevance, practicality and correctness. The problem seems to lie to a considerable extent in the textbooks that are available for college courses. These have problems of fact and process in abundance. This paper narrates some of the experience of the author in anecdotal fashion, but presents a significant analysis of a number of database textbooks, highlighting the pedagogical problems that abound in them.