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Insights from Student Solutions to SQL Homework Problems

Published: 15 June 2020 Publication History

Abstract

We analyze the submissions of 286 students as they solved Structured Query Language (SQL) homework assignments for an upper-level databases course. Databases and the ability to query them are becoming increasingly essential for not only computer scientists but also business professionals, scientists, and anyone who needs to make data-driven decisions. Despite the increasing importance of SQL and databases, little research has documented student difficulties in learning SQL. We replicate and extend prior studies of students' difficulties with learning SQL. Students worked on and submitted their homework through an online learning management system with support for autograding of code. Students received immediate feedback on the correctness of their solutions and had approximately a week to finish writing eight to ten queries. We categorized student submissions by the type of error, or lack thereof, that students made, and whether the student was eventually able to construct a correct query. Like prior work, we find that the majority of student mistakes are syntax errors. In contrast with the conclusions of prior work, we find that some students are never able to resolve these syntax errors to create valid queries. Additionally, we find that students struggle the most when they need to write SQL queries related to GROUP BY and correlated subqueries. We suggest implications for instruction and future research.

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cover image ACM Conferences
ITiCSE '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
June 2020
615 pages
ISBN:9781450368742
DOI:10.1145/3341525
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 15 June 2020

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  1. SQL
  2. database education
  3. online assessment

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Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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  • (2023)Student's Learning Challenges with Relational, Document, and Graph Query LanguagesProceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Data Systems Education: Bridging education practice with education research10.1145/3596673.3596976(30-36)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Mining SQL Problem Solving Patterns using Advanced Sequence Processing AlgorithmsProceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Data Systems Education: Bridging education practice with education research10.1145/3596673.3596973(37-43)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Learning from Errors: An Empirical Study on the Impact of Gamification on SQL Query FormulationProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588821(341-347)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Assessing Peer Correction of SQL and NoSQL QueriesProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569884(535-541)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
  • (2023)A Strategy for Retrospective Evaluation of Students SQL Learning Engagements2023 3rd International Conference on Electrical, Computer, Communications and Mechatronics Engineering (ICECCME)10.1109/ICECCME57830.2023.10252347(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2023
  • (2023)Assessing Student Learning Across Various Database Query Languages2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343409(1-9)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
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  • (2023)Uncovering Patterns of SQL Errors in Student Assignments: A Comparative Analysis of Different Assignment Types2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343207(01-09)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Using a Conceptual Model in Plug-and-Play SQLConceptual Modeling10.1007/978-3-031-47262-6_8(145-161)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2023
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