Database design- is this right?

[Tezread]

I have a table called courses with the following fields:

Coursecode (primary key & auto_increment), briefdesc, aimed at etc

I have created another table called courseaims:

Courseaimid (primary key & auto_increment) coursename.

One course has many courseaims.

In my form that inserts/updates courseaims, I currently have a dropdown field which searchs for all the coursenames in the table coursename. An insert is then made but here is my problem. As it stands I am adding lots of courseaims for one course (one course to many courseaims) but as a result the field coursename in courseaims table has lots of instances of the same coursename. This is a waste and I can normalize this surely
How can I improve this situation and if JOINS are a solution- which type.

Thank you kindly

[bbreslauer]

Put a name field in the courses table, and then use the coursecode to be the link between the two tables. Here's an example:

courses:
coursecode int primary key auto_increment
coursename varchar
briefdesc varchar OR text

courseaims:
courseaimid int primary key auto_increment
coursecode int

Using this design, each coursecode has one name, and you link the name to courseaims via the coursecode.

i.e. SELECT * FROM courses,courseaims WHERE courses.coursecode=courseaims.coursecode ORDER BY coursename ASC;

or something like that, only selecting what you actually need. The key here is to link the two coursecode fields (they can be named whatever you want, as long as they are linked together).