Teaching geographical databases at the engineering master level: learner-centred approach vs. teacher-centred approach

ABSTRACT

This paper reports numbers about the author’s experience, spanning over 13 academic years, of teaching an introductory course about geographical databases to students of the Master degree in Information Engineering at L’Aquila University (Italy). The first eight editions of the course were delivered according to the teacher-centred approach, while the successive five editions have been delivered according to the student-centred approach. The large student engagement which characterised the last five editions of the course was vital in enhancing the student experience and encouraging deeper learning. Two preconditions that explain the results achieved in terms of classroom attendance and students’ performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher-centred approach
• learner-centred approach
• active learning
• students’ performance
• dropout
• geographical databases

Acknowledgments

Many thanks go to an anonymous referee for her/his comments on an earlier version of this paper. The comments influenced deeply the organisation of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Paolino Di Felice is Professor at the University of L’Aquila since 1999. He has published over 100 papers on international refereed journals and conferences. His main research interest concerns databases. In the last 25 years, he studied mainly spatial databases. His research work has been included in the Open Geospatial Consortium standards for the definition of 2D vector data types and topological operators. His research has been funded by national and international institutions and carried out in collaboration with researchers of several countries (Italy, Holland, Germany, USA). He has served within national and international committee in the field of databases.