More Programming Than Programming: Teaching Formal Methods in a Software Engineering Programme
Software Engineering
2022-05-03 v1 Logic in Computer Science
Abstract
Formal methods for software correctness are critical to the future of software engineering - and so must be an essential part of software engineering education. Unfortunately, formal methods are often resisted by students due to perceived difficulty, mathematicity, and practical irrelevance. We redeveloped our software correctness course by taking a programming intensive approach, using the solver-aided language Dafny to provide instant formative feedback via automated assessment. Our redeveloped course increased student retention and resulted in the best evaluation for the course for at least ten years.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2205.00787,
title = {More Programming Than Programming: Teaching Formal Methods in a Software Engineering Programme},
author = {James Noble and David Streader and Isaac Oscar Gariano and Miniruwani Samarakoon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.00787},
year = {2022}
}