Conceptual database design is a difficult task for novice database designers, such as students, and is also therefore particularly challenging for database educators to teach. In the teaching of database design, two general approaches are frequently emphasized: top-down and bottom-up. In this paper, we present an empirical comparison of students'…

This article presents a project-based case study that was developed for students with diverse backgrounds and varied inclinations for engaging technical topics. The project, called History Places, requires that student teams develop a vision for a kind of digital library, propose a conceptual model, and use the model to derive a logical model and…