Worked Examples, Cognitive Load, and Exam Assessments in a Senior Database Course

This paper deals with an upper-year course on internals of relational database systems. It is an experience report about switching from a teaching model using traditional lecturing and homework assignments, to a partially flipped model that replaces regular homework with an abundance of worked examples and more frequent full-length exams. We turn to cognitive load theory to help address the challenges of problem-solving in complex topics such as query evaluation and optimization. Worked examples are used to try to reduce students' cognitive load. Students' confidence levels were captured through surveys. After seeing and practicing many worked examples, students claim confidence in mastering the learning goals. We use Bloom's Dichotomous Key to create a Bloom's Taxonomy weighted index to track the difficulty of our exams over the years, both before and after the switch. Although final exam grades have remained relatively flat, our exams have been getting more difficult, suggesting improved learning, even though we have not seen a significant increase in performance on transfer questions. Principal Component Analysis is used to gain insight into our final exam, showing that a large fraction of the exam questions are needed to account for most of the variance in students' scores.