Work in progress — Examining a finished product as a method for reinforcement of concepts

A common method for teaching the normalization of relational database tables is to begin with definitions for various normal forms and to illustrate them by creating examples of tables that fail to meet those definitions. Such examples can be artificial and often contain only hypothetical data. This paper examines a reverse approach: starting with real-life tabular data discovered outside the context of databases and then relating that data to the definitions. The goal of this approach is to reinforce concepts without focusing solely on formal definitions presented without meaningful context. A variation of this approach, yet to be studied, would require the students to locate such data on a subject of interest to them. This alternate approach might be found to have the side effect of improving the understanding of the subject to which the data relates, as well as the meeting the original goal of reinforcing database concepts.