Software models in practice in student projects: Educators Symposium @ models 2015 - Panel summary

The discussion revealed three approaches in modeling education: 1. Teaching modeling using an integrated environment that smoothly combines code and models, which clarifies the role of models in soft-ware construction. 2. Teaching modeling in a carefully designed process of requirement analysis and problem solving. 3. Teaching modeling using explicit formulation of models - syntax plus semantics, followed by teaching of their usage and design process. Summarizing the participants' views over the panel topic, it seems that there is an agreement on the fact that students do not generally grasp the value of model abstraction. Rather, they tend to perceive models as a burden with a limited benefit, thus not using them as would have been expected. Nevertheless, most participants think that the ap-preciation for models grows when students graduate and experience software development in real industrial applications. The panelists also suggested to conduct a survey that checks these points among graduates of the different approaches.