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The Importance of Teaching Systematic Analysis for Conceptual Models: An Experience Report

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Advances in Conceptual Modeling (ER 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9382))

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Abstract

In this paper, we report on our experience in teaching conceptual modeling at a master-level course at the University of Trento. We use our experiences to argue that systematic model analysis is an important factor that influences learning and understanding of conceptual modeling techniques. In particular, we have observed this effect with the i* goal-oriented language. In previous years students were required to perform only modeling as part of their projects, while in the last year they were also required to apply systematic analysis. We observe that i* analysis not only allows students to evaluate the satisfaction of goals in their model, but also to better understand their models, helping to refine models until they are more meaningful and more likely to fulfill their intended purpose.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.boc-group.com/it/products/adonis/.

  2. 2.

    http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~jenhork/Presentations/11-AdvancediStarBIM.pdf.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by the ERC advanced grant 267856, ‘Lucretius: Foundations for Software Evolution’, www.lucretius.eu. Jennifer Horkoff is supported by an ERC Marie Skodowska-Curie Intra European Fellow-ship (PIEF-GA-2013–627489) and by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship (Sept. 2014 - Aug. 2016).

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Paja, E., Horkoff, J., Mylopoulos, J. (2015). The Importance of Teaching Systematic Analysis for Conceptual Models: An Experience Report. In: Jeusfeld, M., Karlapalem, K. (eds) Advances in Conceptual Modeling. ER 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9382. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25747-1_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25747-1_34

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25746-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25747-1

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