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• 1 media/diagram_2.jpg media/diagram_2.jpg 2024-12-09T14:49:36-08:00 Capturing a classroom (paper exercise) 17 An exercise of data capture using ERD (entity-relationship-diagram) plain 2025-09-08T15:31:44-07:00 In groups of 3-4, students will capture the classroom using a technical design tool called the "entity-relationship-diagram" (ERD).
  
  The ERD is a tool used to design databases, visually representing the entities and attributes the designer plans to create in the database to capture data and how they relate to each other. Before a database designer creates a database, they have to consider how they will represent something digitally (a process, a user, an activity, a workflow, a place). For example, the diagram in the image represents a database of student enrollment in courses. There are two entities: the student and the course, represented by a rectangle. The process we want to capture is the student enrollment, represented by the diamond shape. The attributes are the information attached to each entity. For example, Students have First and Last Name, ID, address and DOB.
  
  Prompt each group to draw a similar diagram that involves the classroom they are in. If they were a database designer, what are the entities, processes, and attributes they would likely include in such a diagram?
  
  Here is an example of an ERD that shows a student enrolling in a course
  
  
  
  
  After each group draws their own ERD, they compare them to see how they imagined the classroom as data in different ways.

  Duration

  15 minutes for drawing the diagram + 10 minutes for discussion and comparison.

  
  Outcomes

  Each group will have a diagram to share.
  Diagrams will likely have similarities and many differences. Use these opportunities to discuss with the students how they made their decisions and what the differences mean for how data is imagined and created in databases in our everyday lives. What are the implications of these different interpretations?

  
  Medium

  Paper
   

  Materials

  • Large pieces of paper for students to draw their ERD
  • Pen (different color is better)
   

  Audience

  Undergraduate and graduate students.