Investigating Research on Teaching Modeling in Software Engineering -A Systematic Mapping Study

Abstract: Context: Modeling is an important activity, which is used, in different phases of software engineering. Without models and modeling, it is nearly impossible to design and develop software systems, which demands the need for modeling to be taught in software engineering. There exist a number of reported models, methods, tools and languages to teach modeling in software engineering, which suggests the need for a classification and an overview of the area. This research investigates the state of published research on teaching modeling in software engineering in order to provide a systematic overview and classification of these different ways of teaching modeling with an insight on their importance and relevance to this research area. Objectives: The overall goal of the research was achieved with fulfilling the following objectives: understanding how systematic mapping is conducted, developing a systematic mapping process that will properly provide data for investigating the published research, applying the process, and finally reflecting on the results of the mappings, analyzing the importance and evaluating relevance of the published research. Methods: Systematic literature review was used as a tool to understand and inspect how systematic mapping was carried out in the area of software engineering. Based on the results of systematic literature review, new guidelines were formulated to conduct systematic mapping. These guidelines were used to investigate the published research on teaching modeling in software engineering. The results obtained through the systematic mapping were evaluated based on Industrial relevance, Rigor and citation count to examine their importance and identify research gaps. Results: 131 articles were classified into five classes such as Languages, Course Design, Curriculum design, Diagrams, others using semi-manual classification scheme and classification facets such as the type of audience, type of contribution, type of research, type of publication, type of publication year, type of research method and type of study setting. After the evaluation of Industrial relevance, rigor & citation ranking on the obtained results of the classification, 8 processes, 4 tools, 3 methods, 2 measurement-metrics and 1 model were extracted to teach modeling in software engineering. Also, this classification when compared with an existing classification, which is based on interviews and discussions, showed that our classification provides a wider overview with a deeper insight of the different ways to teach modeling in software engineering. Conclusions: Results of this systematic mapping study indicate that there is an increase in the research activity on teaching modeling in software engineering, with Unified Modeling Language (UML) being the widely research area. Much research is emphasized on teaching modeling to students from academia which indicates a research gap in developing methods, models, tools and processes to teach modeling to students/practitioners from the industry. Also, considering the citation ranking, industrial relevance and rigor of the articles, areas such as course design and curriculum development are highly neglected, suggesting the need for more research focus.