Machines produce and operate using complex systems of metadata that need to be catalogued, sorted, and processed. Many students lack the experience with metadata and sufficient knowledge about it to understand it as part of their data literacy skills. This paper describes an educational and interactive database activity designed for teaching…

Students often have no exposure to the incredible amount of genomic and proteomic data that is freely and easily accessible online. Becoming familiar with these resources, and seeing how they could be applied to a specific research question, is a prerequisite for students to apply them to their own scientific development. Many students have to…

In this article, the author illustrates the application of a financial database called Bloomberg Professional in a fixed income lesson plan. Most business school programs include a finance course that covers bond pricing and spreads, such as a corporate finance or fixed income course. Bloomberg Professional allows students to interact with primary…

This article presents a multi-stage guided technical project coding Python scripts for utilizing Amazon Web Services (AWS) to work with a document-store database called DynamoDB. Students doing this project should have taken an introductory programming class (ideally in Python) and a database class to have experience with Python coding and…

Undergraduate students entering the classroom are often expected to have the skills needed to find, utilize, and synthesize academic scholarship. Yet, few feel prepared to do so. The research methods classroom provides immense opportunities for developing a meaningful foundation for students to enhance information literacy such that they feel…

Education in biochemistry teaching laboratories focus primarily on applying biochemical techniques to understanding human disease, biochemistry, and biotechnology. With anthropogenic climate change, there is a renewed interest in quantifying biodiversity, especially with the use of molecular-based approaches such as DNA barcoding. This 3-week…

Mass spectrometry is essential for large-scale protein identification in proteomics. By database searching of mass spectrometry data, it is possible to identify proteins without the need to interpret MS/MS spectra (de novo sequencing), which is time-consuming and not feasible as a systematic tool in proteomic analysis. Many authors have reported…

This teaching tip explores the integration of AI tools into database education. The author describes how instructors can use AI tools to prepare teaching materials and how students can use AI to facilitate database development. The teaching tips provided encompass both course-level objectives and assignment-specific strategies. The inclusion of AI…

This teaching case describes the functionality of an applicant processing system designed for a fictitious hotel chain. The system detailed in the case includes a webform where applicants complete and submit job applications. The system also includes a desktop application used by hotel managers and Human Resources to track applications and process…

Recent technological advancements in data storage and processing have changed how companies conduct their business. An increasing number of firms have started putting their efforts in extracting information from their databases to improve profitability and reduce costs using quantitative approaches. Thus, the job market has been experiencing a…

In this article, I discuss the potential uses of the Department of Labor-sponsored Occupational Information Network (O*NET) in the classroom context. O*NET is a free, publicly available resource that provides an array of occupation-specific information, such as relevant tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities, and salary information. Tools such as the…

Cheminformatics is a widely used interdisciplinary field that is important for many chemistry areas. Cheminformatics skills are necessary for dealing with a large amount of chemical information and are considered essential for various tasks such as data analysis, visualization, storage, etc. This paper presents the basic cheminformatics chemistry…

An activity is described in which students in the first semester of a two semester organic chemistry laboratory class are introduced to the use of SciFinder. Students are required to determine the structures of three compounds as well as additional information regarding the synthesis of one of them using some of the features available in SciFinder.

Students of physical chemistry in biochemical disciplines need biochemical examples to capture the need, not always understood, of a difficult area in their studies. The use of thermodynamic data in the chemical reference state may lead to incorrect interpretations in the analysis of biochemical examples when the analysis does not include relevant…

Early exposure to data science skills, such as relational databases, is essential for students in statistics as well as many other disciplines in an increasingly data driven society. The goal of the presented pedagogy is to introduce undergraduate students to fundamental database concepts and to illuminate the connection between these database…