Mistakes in UML Diagrams: Analysis of Student Projects in a Software Engineering CourseSEET
The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is being widely accepted as a standard modelling notation for visualizing software systems during design and development. UML has thus become part of many software engineering course curricula at universities worldwide, providing a recognized tool for practical training of students in understanding and visualizing software design. It is however common that students have difficulties in absorbing UML in its complexity, and often repeat the same mistakes that have been observed by course tutors in previous years. Having a catalogue of such mistakes could hence increase the effectiveness of both teaching and learning of UML diagrams. In this paper, we present such a catalogue, consisting of 146 types of mistakes in eight types of diagrams. As the main contribution of this study, we use this catalogue to guide the analysis of student projects within a software engineering course. In total, over 2,700 diagrams submitted over 12 weeks of a semester by 123 students were analysed to identify the frequency of mistakes (from the catalogue), correlations of the mistakes between different diagram types, correlation of the quality of student projects to exam results, student behaviour in terms of introducing and fixing the mistakes over time, and other interesting insights. The analysis is described together with its setup and execution, and all datasets and detailed guidebook to the catalogue of all mistakes is made available for download.
Thu 30 MayDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
11:00 - 12:30 | SE Instructional StrategiesSoftware Engineering Education and Training / Posters at St-Paul / Ste-Catherine Chair(s): Timothy Lethbridge University of Ottawa | ||
11:00 15mTalk | The Case of the Fragmented ClassroomSEET Software Engineering Education and Training William Billingsley University of New England | ||
11:15 6mPoster | Quantifying Patterns and Programming Strategies in Block-based Programming Environments Posters | ||
11:21 15mTalk | Linking Code Readability, Structure, and Comprehension among Novices: It's ComplicatedSEET Software Engineering Education and Training Pre-print | ||
11:36 10mTalk | FVT: A Fragmented Video Tutor for "Dubbing" Software Development TutorialsSEET Software Engineering Education and Training Chunyin Nong , Qiao Zhang Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, 75205, Liguo Huang Dept. of Computer Science, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, 75205, Di Cui Xi'an Jiaotong University, Qinghua Zheng MOEKLINNS Lab, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, 710049, China, Ting Liu MOEKLINNS Lab, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, 710049, China | ||
11:46 15mTalk | Mistakes in UML Diagrams: Analysis of Student Projects in a Software Engineering CourseSEET Software Engineering Education and Training Stanislav Chren Masaryk University, Barbora Buhnova Masaryk University, Martin Macak Masaryk University, Faculty of Informatics, Lukas Daubner Masaryk University, Faculty of Informatics, Bruno Rossi Masaryk University Pre-print | ||
12:01 29mTalk | Author Panel DiscussionSEET Software Engineering Education and Training |