Using Examples for Teaching Software Design: An Experiment Using a Repository of UML Class Diagrams

Abstract

Context: This research is positioned in the field of methods for creating software design and the teaching thereof.Goal: The goal of this research is to study the effects of using a collection of examples for creating a software design.Method: We ran a controlled experiment for evaluating the use of a broad collection of examples for creating software designs by software engineering students. In this study, we focus on software designs as represented through UML class diagrams. The treatment is the use of the collection of examples. These examples are offered via a searchable repository. The outcome variable we study is the quality of the design (as assessed by a group of experts). After this, all students were offered the opportunity to improve their design using the collection of examples. We ran a post-assignment questionnaire to collect qualitative data about the experience of the participants.Results: Considering six quality attributes measured by experts, our results show that: 1) the models of the students who used examples are 18% better than those of who did not use examples. 2) the models of the students who did not use examples for constructing became 19% better after updating their models using examples. We complement our statistical analysis with insights from the postassignment questionnaire. Also, we observed that students are more confident about their design when they use examples.Conclusion: Students deliver better software designs when they use a collection of example software designs.

Teaching Model-Based Requirements Engineering to Industry Professionals: An Experience Report

“…This also applies to the use of industry examples in an industrial setting. Our findings in this paper go even further, by stating that industry professionals benefit from the controlled application of the instructed material in a real project from their day-to-day work, which aligns with the findings by Karasneh, Jolak & Chaudron [53] who showed with a controlled experiment that the use of real examples is beneficial.…”

An Automated Approach for Classifying Reverse-Engineered and Forward-Engineered UML Class Diagrams

“…Novice software designers or students struggle with different problems during their training tasks [86][87][88]. A recent research by Karasneh et al shows that access to a corpus of UML modeling examples helps students who are novices with UML modeling to create better designs [89]. This is aligned with our implication for university teachers in paper C, that teachers should promote students to consume UML models before creating models.…”

Teaching Software Architecture Patterns Using ACME Language

“…3-Other merge education by industry long real project with experts collaborative. [20] 2019 community of learners [21] 2009 community of learners [22] 2012 teaching by example [3] AND [4] states that follow IEEE/ACM standard curricula for computer science students, is not enough, students need more practice in local system software. Changing in computer science curricula to prepare motivated, applicable and experts in software architecture students.…”

“…As [3] mention, students have to architect system related to their environment, we find flooding alert system suitable, river Nile flooding is the yearly action, and most of the students have an idea about it, as previous example we start with simple application sensor and alarm, till alarming from expected amount of rains.…”

“…Figer. 3 sensors with a filters that will send update values at every dispatch, and will sometimes send the critical event. The first sensor will monitor the water level and raise warning message if certain conditions are met.…”