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We do not understand what it says – studying student perceptions of software modelling

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Abstract

Background

Despite the potential benefits of software modelling, developers have shown a considerable reluctance towards its application. There is substantial existing research studying industrial use and technical challenges of modelling. However, there is a lack of detailed empirical work investigating how students perceive modelling.

Aim

We investigate the perceptions of students towards modelling in a university environment.

Method

We conducted a multiple case study with 5 cases (5 courses from 3 universities) and two units of analysis (student and instructor). We collected data through 21 semi-structured interviews, which we analysed using in-vivo coding and thematic analysis.

Results

Students see some benefits of modelling, e.g., using models for planning and communicating within the group. However, several factors negatively influence their understanding of modelling, e.g., assignments with unclear expectations, irregular and insufficient feedback on their models, and lack of experience with the problem domains.

Conclusions

Our findings help in understanding better why students struggle with software modelling, and might be reluctant to adopt it later on. Our recommendations on modelling education could help to improve education and training in software modelling, both at university and in industry. Specifically, we recommend that educators try to provide feedback beyond syntactical issues, and to consider using problem domains that students are knowledgeable about.

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Data Availability

We publish 13 out of the 21 anonymised interview transcripts on Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6913780. We did not receive consent to publish the remaining 8 transcripts.

Notes

  1. We used Konch (https://www.konch.ai/) and Go Transcript (https://gotranscript.com/).

  2. https://miro.com/

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the interviewees for participating in the study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Technology, Department of Computer Science, Reykjavik University, Menntavegur 1, 102, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Shalini Chakraborty & Grischa Liebel

Authors
  1. Shalini Chakraborty
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  2. Grischa Liebel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Grischa Liebel.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Communicated by: Marco Torchiano.

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Appendices

Appendix

A Interview Guides

We present two interview guides in this section used for students and instructors. We scheduled 40 minutes for student interviews and 30 minutes for instructor interviews. Interviews were recorded with permission from the interviewees.

1.1 A.1 Student Interview Guide

The interview starts with a small introduction of 5 minutes presented by the interviewer which consists the following points:

  • Asking permission to record the interview.

  • Introduction of the interviewer.

  • Explain the purpose of the study, the research questions.

  • Explain the rules of the interview.

Following the introduction, the interview starts. It has two parts, first the Introductory Questions. The duration of this part is 10 minutes.

  1. 1.

    I1: Which degree are you currently pursuing? (in which major?)

  2. 2.

    I2: Have you worked in industry? If yes, what role/domain?

  3. 3.

    I3: Do you have any experience with modelling? What kind of experience do you have with modelling?

  4. 4.

    I4: Go in detail with the experience, ask about syntax, diagrams that they had used before.

In the second part, Modelling Questions we go in detail with the modelling challenges and the duration is a maximum of 25 minutes. Before going into the modelling questions, the interviewer explains software modelling and her research interest in software modelling. The reason is to make sure that the interviewee has a clear idea and can give concrete answers.

1.:

M1: What experience do you have in software modelling?

2.:

M2: What did you like from your experience?

3.:

M3: What challenges did you face during your experience?

4.:

M4: In your opinion what are the reasons behind these challenges?

5.:

(If needed): When you are using a modelling notation what typically troubles you?

6.:

M5: How was your experience with modelling tools? Tell me about the tools you have used in the past.

7.:

M6: What did you like and dislike about each of those tools?

8.:

M7: For which purposes/in which situations (in SE) do you think modelling is useful? When is this not the case?

9.:

M8: In your case can you tell me of an experience where you found modelling useful?

10.:

M9: What advantages and disadvantages do you see in modelling?

11.:

M10: Did you get enough knowledge about modelling from the courses you have taken on the topic?

12.:

M11: What was missing from those courses?

13.:

M12: How would the perfect modelling course look like?

14.:

M13: Do you have any comments or suggestions?

1.2 A.2 Instructor Interview Guide

  1. 1.

    Could you shortly describe which topics you cover in your course?

  2. 2.

    Regarding modelling, what are you covering in the course?

    1. 1.

      Are you teaching modelling notation (e.g., UML diagrams)?

    2. 2.

      Are you teaching how to draw those models (example: identify nouns/verbs in a text to draw class diagrams)?

    3. 3.

      Are you teaching how the models relate to code?

    4. 4.

      Are you teaching semantics of modelling notations?

  3. 5.

    Roughly how much time is spent on modelling in your course?

  4. 6.

    Regarding modelling, what is covered in assignments or exam?

  5. 7.

    How do you think students perceive the modelling part of the course?

  6. 8.

    What do you think are the things that students struggle with (with respect to modelling)?

  7. 9.

    What challenges are you facing when teaching modelling?

  8. 10.

    How do you think this could be improved?

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Chakraborty, S., Liebel, G. We do not understand what it says – studying student perceptions of software modelling. Empir Software Eng 28, 149 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-023-10404-w

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