Adopting Model-Eliciting Activities in an Undergraduate Software Engineering Course Through Real-World Projects

This innovative practice work in progress paper discusses the integration of Model-Eliciting Activities (MEA) into in software engineering (SE) classes, and the challenges faced in preparing and delivering these activities. The preparation and implementation of MEA in SE classes can be challenging, as it requires creating self-assessable MEA questions that simulate real-world problems, ensuring the integration of MEA in SE course topics, providing feedback, and analyzing learning outcomes. In this research, the authors address these challenges and gain practical experience in designing and implementing MEA in SE classes. The authors conducted experiments over two consecutive semesters in SE courses that cover topics such as requirement solicitation, design and implementation, software testing techniques, secure software, and software quality assurance. They incorporated MEA questions that simulate real-world problems into both face-to-face and online classes, ensuring the integration of MEA in SE course topics, providing feedback, and analyzing the learning gains. This paper contributes to the distribution of MEA application for SE courses. It presents the authors' experiences, challenges, reports evaluations, and findings in implementing MEA in SE courses. Overall, this paper provides insights into the effective integration of MEA into SE courses, and the benefits it can bring to students' learning outcomes.

I. Introduction

This Innovative Practice work in progress paper discusses the integration of Model-Eliciting Activities (MEAs) in software engineering classes, and the challenges faced in preparing and delivering these activities. MEAs are a problem-solving approach that aims to enhance students' critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, and communication skills by presenting real-world problems that require them to work in teams to create, test, and refine their models in response to the needs of a hypothetical client [1]–[3].