An e-learning tool for database administration

In this paper, the authors described an item of "intelligent" educational software that is intended to help students taking university computer science courses to understand the fundamentals of transaction scheduling. The software, implemented in PROLOG, empowers students to construct their own learning environment and is able to provide tailored forms of feedback to different types of learner. The development and evaluation of the software was described, and details of the analysis of the results of the investigation into the effectiveness of the software as a teaching and learning tool was presented. The results suggest that the learning tool provides students with a different and valuable type of learning experience, which traditional methods do not provide.