Teaching Formal Methods: An Experience Report

Teaching Formal Methods to Software Engineers through Collaborative Learning (Short Paper)

“…Despite it being optional, 64% of all students who participated in the group assignment filled out the survey, whose results we comment in detail in the following. In some cases, results are compared with the ones previously presented by Askarpour and Bersani [3] to assess the evolution of the course with respect to its previous editions. About 75% of all students attended the course during their 1 st M.Sc.…”

“…To complement the data in Fig. 2, 93.3% of the respondents also stated that the course stimulated their curiosity towards FM, and 4 people out of 10 said that they would consider a FM-related project for their Master Thesis (compared to the 1/10 ratio from two years ago [3]). Finally, the question about whether they would recommend the course to other students received an average score of 4.0/5.0, which is in line with the average of Politecnico courses (3.2/4.0).…”

“…The selection of topics for the course (fully reported by Askarpour and Bersani [3]) and the adopted teaching approach are a tentative compromise between the two conflicting tendencies in FM teaching: deep focus on theoretical background and mathematical formalism versus the learning by doing approach. Concerns that Computer Science education is exceedingly distancing itself from abstract theoretical concepts started to emerge twenty years ago [20].…”

“…For the past ten years, the project focused on temporal logic [3], while, as of the last two editions of the course, the formalism of choice is Timed Automata (TA) [2]. The system under analysis dictates this choice since its behavior mainly hinges on timely synchronization among the different elements.…”

“…At the time of project assignment, Italy was not in full lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we do not possess accurate data due to privacy concerns, it is safe to estimate-based on how many people physically attended lectures 3 -that the vast majority of them were not residing permanently in Milan during project development. Nevertheless, the project outcome is entirely in software form and the university provides all students with the tools necessary to communicate remotely.…”