Gained knowledge by students in a course on relational databases

Students have an introductory course on relational databases in the second year of their Bachelor studies in Computer Science at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Maribor. Students attending this obligatory course have completed the pre-course knowledge test on relational databases before starting the course. The test also included self-evaluation questions on their knowledge and practical exercises with E-R modeling and SQL. Some students felt that they had a lot of pre-knowledge of relational databases, but in some cases, it turned out that students with less pre-knowledge achieved a similar final score to the ones with more pre-knowledge. The students could pass the course with two mid-term exams or one final exam. The results of the exams were compared to the pre-course results, and it was estimated how much the students had learned through the course. The results show that students with higher pre-knowledge did not gain as much knowledge as students with lower pre-knowledge on databases.