Teaching Software Modelling in an Undergraduate Introduction to Software Engineering

In this article we present our design of an (otherwise completely ordinary) undergraduate introduction to software engineering with an emphasis on contemporary software modelling. A distinguishing aspect of our course is that we aim at a comprehensive introduction of modelling in two regards. Firstly, we introduce proper sub-languages of common modelling languages like UML class diagrams (rather than sampling examples or covering as many building blocks as possible) with a complete formal abstract syntax and semantics (so to give exact meaning to all models from the sub-language). Secondly, we emphasise issues arising from software models in the context of software engineering, e.g., that (formal) analysis results needs proper interpretation wrt. the considered software. We discuss our objectives wrt. formal modelling in software engineering, and outline the content of the course and the narratives that we use to reach these objectives. Evaluation results from four seasons of teaching the course give no indication of over-straining students wrt. level or workload.