Building a database and search engine for reuse of course materials

The authors have developed software for creating databases of course materials on the World-Wide Web. The goal is to allow instructors at different institutions to share materials and develop them jointly. Their first two databases, in computer architecture and object technology, comprise thousands of problems and lectures downloaded (with permission) from course Websites around the world. The database is searchable by classification or fulltext string. To populate the databases with up-to-date material, they started by building a list of course Websites. Using several sources, they came up with a list of 73 sites in computer architecture and 40 sites in object technology. However, only a minority of authors gave them permission to load their material. To provide access to a larger amount of material, they are extending their search capability to include material on the Web as well as in the database. The search engine that we have used finds course Websites by searching a filtered set of educational domains for sites containing keywords characteristic of course material in the target discipline. Finally, they report on their experience of building software using a combination of funded research assistants, students working on senior-design projects, and independent-study students