The use of off-the-shelf on-line materials presents several challenges. In this session panelists report on their experiences in evaluating, installing and using such materials. Both positive and negative aspects of such use are discussed. The aim of the session is to provide useful information to those considering using (and those already using) on-line materials in their teaching. The session presents information in three mini-presentations, followed by a general discussion session.

Many curricular guidelines, such as the Recommended Curriculum for Computer Science at Liberal Arts Colleges [4], suggest that students be exposed to many different programming paradigms (e.g., imperative, functional, object-oriented, declarative) in the undergraduate curriculum. Some institutions believe that students should have early exposure to many paradigms, often as early as the first two courses.Many institutions emphasize object-oriented programming early in the curriculum. Some also include functional programming. Imperative topics are often covered in courses that emphasize object-oriented or functional issues. Where does declarative programming fit? Sometimes not until an upper-level language paradigms course or artificial intelligence course. Sometimes it never fits, at least not explicitly.

No abstract available.

Last year at SIGCSE'99, for the first time in recent memory, a Birds-of-Feather (BOF) session for Database educators was held. As some attendees noted, there had not been a Database education paper accepted for that or the previous SIGCSE meetings, although there had been three @@@@ 1997 [12]. From about two dozen educators, “meta-data” or data about many aspects of their courses were discovered. Few had paid any attention to ACM/IEEE's curriculum '91 when designing their courses to fit late-century students' needs. This expository paper examines, first, what was the state of the Database course near the end of the 20th century, as background to a discussion of what should or will be the near-term future of the (first, undergraduate) Database course. From data gathered mostly at the BOF and some later by email, we found the following “state of the course,” 1998-99.

No abstract available.

article Free Access Share on Evaluation: turning technology from toy to tool: report of the working group on evaluation Authors: Vicki L. Almstrum The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at AustinView Profile , Nell Dale The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at AustinView Profile , Anders Berglund Uppsala University, Sweden Uppsala University, SwedenView Profile , Mary Granger The George Washington University The George Washington UniversityView Profile , Joyce Currie Little Towson State University Towson State UniversityView Profile , Diane M. Miller University of Southern Mississippi University of Southern MississippiView Profile , Marian Petre Open University, UK Open University, UKView Profile , Paul Schragger Villanova University Villanova UniversityView Profile , Fred Springsteel University of Missouri University of MissouriView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGCSE BulletinVolume 28Issue SI1996 pp 201–217https://doi.org/10.1145/237477.237648Published:01 January 1996Publication History 22citation906DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations22Total Downloads906Last 12 Months38Last 6 weeks3 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

In this paper, we give a polynomial-time method to construct effectively the unique universal instance, using as few nulls as possible, from any loop-free network database, via a "minimal information" extension of natural join. Our results can be seen as concretely and quickly implementing the universal relation view for databases which are not pairwise consistent.

We investigate the question of when two entity-relationship diagrams (ERD's) should be considered equivalent, in the sense of representing the same information. This question is very important for a database design process which uses the ERD model, and can be interpreted in various ways. We give three natural and increasingly stricter criteria for developing concepts of equivalence for ERD's. We first give a notion of "domain data compatibility" which ensures that the ERD's in question represent the same universe of data in an aggregate sense. Then we define the set of functional dependencies which are naturally embedded in each ERD, and use it to develop a concept of "data dependency equivalence" which ensures that the ERD's satisfy the same constraints (functional dependencies) among the represented data. Finally, we give our strongest criterion, instance data equivalence, which requires the ERD's to have the same power to represent instances of data. We develop several alternate forms of this third notion, including some giving efficient tableaux tests for its occurrence. Indeed, for each type of equivalence, we give a polynomial-time algorithm to test for it.