ÐThe development of an elevator scheduling system by undergraduate students is presented. The development was performed by 20 teams of undergraduate students, divided into two groups. One group produced specifications by employing a formal method that involves only first-order logic. The other group used no formal analysis. The solutions of the groups are compared using the metrics of code correctness, conciseness, and complexity. Particular attention is paid to a subset of the formal methods group which provided a full verification of their implementation. Their results are compared to other published formal solutions. The formal methods group's solutions are found to be far more correct than the nonformal solutions.Index TermsÐFormal methods, software specifications, software engineering curriculum.
A three year study of integrating formal methods into the undergraduate software engineering curriculum of the Systems Analysis Department of Miami University was recently completed (NSF Educational Innovation Program CDA-9522257). Formal analysis skills were added to the curriculum to address the concern that the discipline of software engineering education lacks sufficient emphasis on mathematics and engineering science. A presentation of the six courses chosen for integration of formal analysis is given. The empirical data which directly compares the problem solving skills of the formal methods and control student groups shows that the formal methods students possess an increased level of complex problem solving skills as well as a greater ability to perform problem abstraction.
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