The Information School University of Sheffield attracts postgraduate and undergraduate students from a diverse range of backgrounds and with a wide spread of computer literacy levels. Many take the module ‘Database Design’ because they perceive it will increase their employability and it is central to their degree. However failure rates have been high and the distributions of grades achieved ‘negative skewed’. A new module team set about identifying potential causes and developing solutions. A series of Oracle database design and implementation laboratories was perceived to be pivotal. These were failing to increase students’ understanding of relational databases before they embarked upon the coursework assignments and were not reinforcing the concepts introduced in the lectures. The solution was radical: attendance at the laboratories was made entirely optional. The demonstrations were replaced with a series of four online tutorials supported by the university’s virtual learning environment bespoke YouTube videos informative slide shows carefully chosen Web links and tailored tasks. The completion of the tasks during the first few weeks of the semester became a mandatory aspect of the module’s assessment. By making these changes the number of students failing the module significantly reduced the distributions of grades achieved became ‘positively skewed’ student satisfaction with the module rose and fewer students sought extra tuition from the module team.
