DESIGNING DATA BASES FOR IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF TEACHING MATERIAL

This paper presents the design and development of data bases in order to improve teaching material, specifically for scientific and technical areas. As it is well known, the support of didactic material has changed during the last years. Nowadays the students need high quality presentations of the different subjects in order to get them to study, especially regarding technical subjects. Even the understanding of the subjects is sometimes related not only to the teacher but to how the content is presented by slides, demonstrations, computational simulations, videos, etc. We think that if we present this content in an attractive way, it can help to take advantage of the classes and benefit both the students and the teachers. We have elaborated different data bases for several technical subjects. They are available for teachers and can be downloaded from the virtual campus. Some of the libraries gather general images or symbols that can be used for any subjects. Other libraries are related to the bibliography of each subject, For example, we have realized that if the students know how the book they have to study looks like, they are more willing to look for it at the university library. The image of the cover of the manual helps to identify the subject, the authors, etc. Other libraries collect dynamic simulations of some experiments that illustrate some points. One of the main contributions of these data bases is the structure they present. They are organized in a systematic way in different levels for the different items and topics. It makes easy and faster for any teacher to look for and to find images or questionnaires or examples with the required quality to add to the slides or notes. The different libraries include not only images but figures, questions, diagrams, logos, links, computational demos, etc. that improve the didactic material. Some of the example can be accessed in a remote way. As an example, the implementation of this proposal in some subjects that are taught in the Computer Science degree at the University Complutense of Madrid are shown.