Attribute Name Description
CwisNumber The Campus Wide Information System2 number of the lecturer.
3.3 Course
A course is the timetabled teaching of various topics within a given field of education for a predefined period of time3. At the end of the period the attending students are evaluated and may either pass or fail the course. Passing a course gives the student a certain amount of credit points4.
Figure 3.3:Logical model of theCourseclass and its associations to theStudyType, LanguageandAssessmentTypeclasses.
TheCourseclass (figure 3.3 represents a course. EachCourseobject (figure 3.3) is linked to one or moreStudyType (section 3.8) objects which describe the study types for which the course is intended. The association between theCourseandLanguage(section 3.19) classes represents the language in which the course is taught. Courses are assessed in exactly one way illustrated by the association between the Course and the AssessmentType (section 3.17) class.
TheCourseclass has the following attributes:
Attribute Name Description
Number A unique identification of the course which may contain characters – e.g. “C4222” or “88890”.
Name The name of the course.
TeachingForm Text describing how the course is taught e.g.
“group discussions”, “lectures” or “laboratory ex-ercises”.
EvaluationForm Description of how the course is evaluated e.g.
“Reports count 60% and the written exam 40%”
or “One report with oral defence”.
2http://www.adm.dtu.dk/fakta/om cwis/index e.htm
3http://www.kurser.dtu.dk
4http://www.adm.dtu.dk/studier/bekendt/bekend d.htm A template for a course description can be found in [11]
Attribute Name Description
ParticipantLimitationMin The minimum number of students who must sign up for the course in order for the course to be completed.
ParticipantLimitationMax The maximum number of students who can attend the course simultaneously.
Objective A description of the course objective i.e.
what the student will achieve by passing the course.
Contents Text describing the contents of the course i.e. an excerpt of the syllabus for the course.
Remarks Special remarks regarding the course.
Url The url for the course home page where
further information can be retrieved.
LastUpdate Date and time for the last update of the course description.
3.3.1 Course Parts
Some courses span several periods and must thus be divided into sequent parts in order to avoid ambiguity and to state exactly which part of the course belongs to which period. Each part of a multi-part course must be signed up for in ascending order and successive parts must be finished in the first possible periods where the course part is taught as shown in figure 3.4. Figure 3.5 shows a scenario which may not be allowed – even though part 2 of the course is taught in periodsbanddit is considered another instance of the course part in periodd.
Period a b c d . . .
Part 1 2
Figure 3.4:Allowed scenario – course parts must be finished in the first possible pe-riod.
Period a b c d . . .
Part 1 2
Figure 3.5:Disallowed scenario – unless part 2 is not taught in periodsbandc.
The CoursePart class represents a part of a course and a course consists of one or more sequentially numbered course parts depicted by the association between the Course and CoursePartclasses shown in figure 3.6.
Figure 3.6:Logical model of the associations between theCourseandCoursePart classes.
TheCoursePartclass has the following attribute:
Attribute Name Description
PartNumber The number of the course part.
3.3 Course 17
3.3.2 Periods and Credit Points
Figure 3.7:Logical model of the associations between theCoursePartclass and the CoursePartPeriod,Period,ModuleandPointclasses.
The total number of credit points which is obtained by passing a course is distributed among the course parts. The credit points for each course part are described by the association between theCoursePart and Point(section 3.13) classes (figure 3.7). To preserve the rule illustrated in figure 3.4 each course part must be associated with the periods in which it is taught. This association is shown in figure 3.7.
A CoursePartPeriod object may be associated with one or more Module (section 3.15) objects which correspond to the timetable modules in which the course part is taught.
3.3.3 Modules
The timetable schedule of courses may be specified in a compound form as shown in the next example:
For course28010the modules are specified as5: E5A and F5A
HereE means autumn (Danish: efter˚ar) andF stands for spring (Danish: for˚ar). 5Ais the module in which the course is taught, Wednesdays from 8:00 to 12:00. So according to this the course consists of two parts, the first part is taught in the autumn and the second part is taught in spring. However, the course description says that the course only spans one teaching period and as the course only gives the student 5 credit points the author probably meant:
E5A or F5A
Another example is course28011which has the following specification of modules6: E3A and E5A and January
or F2B and June
From this it appears that the course consists of two parts – the student may take the first part either in the autumn in the modules3Aand5Aor in spring in module2B. The corresponding second parts of the course are taught in January and June, respectively. The course description confirms this interpretation.
5http://www.kurser.dtu.dk/presentation/presentation.asp?coursecode=28010-2
6http://www.kurser.dtu.dk/presentation/presentation.asp?coursecode=28011-2
The module specification for course28010 corresponds to the general specification in figure 3.8 whereMis the set of available modules.
(a1∨b1∨. . .∨z1)
Figure 3.8:Most common module specification.
Whereas the module specification for course28011has the form shown in figure 3.9.
(a1∧b1∧. . .∧z1)
Figure 3.9:Less common module specification.
3.3.4 Course interdependencies
A course may have relations to other courses and the following four types of interdependencies have been identified:
Figure 3.10:Logical model of the four associations from theCourseclass to itself.
3.3 Course 19 The Course class has four associations to itself describing the possible interdependencies between courses (figure 3.10). A course may have none or many of the four types of interde-pendencies.
For course27031the technical prerequisites are:
27000 / 27001.28120 (if possible at the same time). Mega MAT
The / operator should be interpreted as logicalor and the . (dot) operator means logicaland in this context7. Logically this expression is unambiguous since and takes precedence over or8 and bearing in mind that “Mega MAT” has course number 01005the expression could also be written as:
27000 ∨ (27001 ∧ 28120 ∧ 01005)
Judging by the contents of the courses, however, this is most likely not what the author intended as the courses 27000 and 27001 are equivalent and the courses28120 and 01005 are completely different. What the author actually meant is probably:
(27000 ∨ 27001) ∧ 28120 ∧ 01005
This raises the question of whether to read the expression using the precedence of logical operators in boolean logic or in a left–to–right fashion.
Nonetheless, mandatory prerequisites, desirable prerequisites and point blocking courses are specified in the same way which leads to the general specification of interdependencies between courses shown in figure 3.11 whereC is the set of courses.
(a1∨b1∨. . .∨z1)
Figure 3.11:Most commonly used course dependency specification.
The specification in figure 3.11 is used for the vast majority of courses, however, a few courses use a different specification. For instance course31652for which the technical prerequisites are described as9:
(31029.31657)/(01032.41621) This may also be written as:
(31029 ∧ 31657) ∨ (01032 ∧ 41621) Generally this can be written as the expression shown in figure 3.12.
In order to sign up for a course its mandatory prerequisites must be satisfied – i.e. any mandatory prerequisite courses must have been passed. Mandatory courses are typically
7Confer ([11])
8Confer ([24])
9http://www.kurser.dtu.dk/presentation/presentation.asp?coursecode=31652-2
(a1 ∧b1 ∧. . .∧z1)
Figure 3.12:Sparsely used course dependency specification.
safety related – e.g. prior to working with high voltages or hazardous chemicals a mandatory safety course must be taken.
Technical prerequisite courses are not mandatory, but they do provide some knowledge which the students are assumed to be familiar with prior to signing up for a course. Technical pre-requisites may also be specified as qualifications – e.g. for course02393the technical prereq-uisites are described as “Knowledge of basic programming concepts as datatypes, choices and decisions, loops and functions”.
Desirable prerequisite courses contain useful knowledge which might be relevant, however, they are neither mandatory nor do they give any competence required to sign up for a course.
Desirable prerequisites may too be defined as qualifications – e.g. the desirable prerequisites for course28252are “Mathematical and Process technology background”.
A course is point blocking in relation to another course if the contents of the two are mostly alike and while a student is allowed to sign up for both courses, only the first one passed will give the student any credit points. Often a course is point blocking in combination with earlier/later versions of the same course so students cannot just easily collect a lot of credit points by taking similar courses. One might also say that a course and its point blocking courses are mutually exclusive with regards to credit points.
(A⊲⊳ C)p ∧(B⊲⊳ C)p ;(A⊲⊳ B)p
Figure 3.13:Transitivity between point blocking courses may not be assumed.
Figure 3.13 illustrates that if a courseA is point blocking in relation to (denoted by the⊲⊳p operator) a courseCand another courseB is also point blocking in relation to the courseC then the coursesAandBare often mutually point blocking as well, however, this transitivity does not always hold.
3.3.5 Recommended Placement
As it appears from figure 3.14 courses may have a recommended placement – i.e. at which point in the course of study a course should ideally be taken. The recommended placement may be specified separately for individual study types either specifically like:
Bachelor of Science: “4th to 5th semester”
Master of Science: “2nd to 3rd semester”
3.3 Course 21 or as a concept like:
Bachelor of Science: “At the end of the study”
Master of Science: “In the middle of the study”
Figure 3.14:Logical model of the association between theCourse, Recommended-PlacementConcept,CourseRecommendedPlacementandStudyTypeclasses.
TheRecommendedPlacementConceptclass represents the possible concepts of placement rec-ommendations – e.g. “The middle of the study” or “At the end of the study” .
TheRecommendedPlacementConceptclass has the following attribute:
Attribute Name Description
Name The name of the concept – e.g. “The middle of the study”.
TheCourseRecommendedPlacementclass has the following attribute:
Attribute Name Description
Description Description of the recommended placement of the course in relation to a given study type – e.g.
“B.Sc.: 3rd semester” and “M.Sc.: 2nd semester”.
3.3.6 Miscellaneous
Figure 3.15:Logical model of the association between theCourse class and the Lecturer,KeywordandDepartmentclasses.
Figure 3.15 reflects that each course may have one or more keywords (section 3.10) associated with it. These keywords are selected by the author to describe the contents of the course. A course has one or more contact persons (lecturers) who are usually also the persons who teach the course. Commonly, a course is offered by a specific department, however, some courses are offered through a collaboration between multiple departments.