TITLE:
Influence of Software Modeling and Design on Domain-Specific Abstract Thinking: Student’s Perspective
AUTHORS:
Zakarya A. Alzamil
KEYWORDS:
Domain-Specific Abstract Thinking; Software Modeling; Software Design; Teaching Modeling and Design; Software Engineering Education
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Software Engineering and Applications,
Vol.6 No.10,
October
16,
2013
ABSTRACT:
Software engineering has been taught
at many institutions as individual course for many years. Recently, many higher
education institutions offer a BSc degree in Software Engineering. Software
engineers are required, especially at the small enterprises, to play many roles,
and sometimes simultaneously. Beside the technical and managerial skills, software
engineers should have additional intellectual skills such as domain-specific
abstract thinking. Therefore, software engineering curriculum should help the
students to build and improve their skills to meet the labor market needs. This
study aims to explore the perceptions of software engineering students on the
influence of learning software modeling and design on their domain-specific
abstract thinking. Also, we explore the role of the course project in improving
their domain-specific abstract thinking. The study results have shown that, most
of the surveyed students believe that learning and practicing modeling and
design concepts contribute to their ability to think abstractly on specific
domain. However, this finding is influenced by the students’ lack of the comprehension of some modeling and design aspects (e.g., generalization). We
believe that, such aspects should be introduced to the students at early levels
of software engineering curriculum, which certainly will improve their ability
to think abstractly on specific domain.