On the Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Quality of Students’ Conceptual Models

Visual notations and conceptual models, such as ER diagrams or UML diagrams aid in aligning stakeholder needs, defining and prioritizing processes and goals for the system under development, serve as a reference for requirements elicitation, negotiation, and enable validation as well as verification of artifacts. With such a ubiquitous presence and paramount importance, conceptual models have therefore been introduced in software engineering curricula far and wide. However, it is exceedingly difficult to teach and learn conceptual modeling. Not only does it require educators to instruct notation and syntax of the visual language, but also semantic intricacies. Similarly, students struggle with what differentiates a “good” conceptual model from an inadequate one, how to use conceptual models of different types in conjunction with one another in a meaningful way, or simply how to avoid ambiguity and vagueness. In this paper, we discuss the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic quality of conceptual models in four courses from an undergraduate software engineering program. It is not our aim to present empirically rigorous results, but to contribute to the body of knowledge on the quality of typical novices’ conceptual models. We seek to foster discussion in the community and present observations and results for comparison

Supporting the Reflective Learning of Conceptual Modeling Using Interactive Timelines and Replays

It is not a trivial task to teach “good” conceptual modeling in a structured way. One problem we encountered in our previous exploratory studies is the predominant reflection of the quality of finished models and less of the modeling process itself. As a result, many phenomena like the emergence of errors or the coordination and collaboration phases in group modeling usually get out of focus and are subsequently not thoroughly considered in teaching. Thus, we have developed a tool-supported timeline method, which allows us to review and discuss the collaborative development process of models after they have been finished or submitted. We evaluated the method and employed a variety of tool features in our regular undergrad courses. Considering the perspective and experiences of teachers and learners alike, we discovered that teachers can use our method to better analyze strategies and made mistakes when enough time to prepare the reflection, even if this increases the time distance to the event it is reflected on. Learners were motivated to share and reflect on their actions. Furthermore, we identified further steps to facilitate our reflective modeling teaching method