A final lesson on teaching open source NoSQL databases

There are two aspects worth highlighting on the practical nature of the exercises. On one hand, they illustrated how several of the database concepts that students have learned in class, applied to real-world situations. Particularly in the case of MongoDB as used for document management, and in the case of M as used as a standard NoSQL database in healthcare and financial applications. On the other hand, the tutorial sessions were structured as “lessons” where the students followed a series of step-by-step instructions and executed them at their own pace. This, of course, meant that some of the students finished the exercises very early, while others had to continue with the exercise in the days following the class. This gesture of the students coming back to finish the exercises afterward, was for us a sign of successfully having managed to attract their attention to the subject.