Teaching Formal Methods to Software Engineers through Collaborative Learning (Short Paper)

It is common knowledge among researchers in the field that teaching formal methods can prove a challenging task. This paper reports on the approach adopted for a Master’s Degree course at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, as an attempt to reverse this trend by introducing collaborative learning activities. Students put concepts learned during theoretical lectures into practice through a hands-on group assignment. Each group develops the formal model of a Cyber-Physical System through the Uppaal tool, starting from a set of requirements provided by the instructor. After delivering the assignment, we invite students to fill an evaluation survey whose results suggest a very high satisfaction level towards the hybrid theoretical-practical approach of the course.