Qualitative Requirements Elicitation of Student Requirements for Tool-supported Teaching of UML Diagrams

Florian Huber, Tobias Eigler, Georg Hagel, Christian Wolff

Abstract: Learning how to model software systems or components is considered to be a central part in the education of future computer scientists. Students are usually introduced to this topic in software engineering courses. As de facto standard, most of them teach the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for creating diagrams in specific contexts. This task regularly presents students with significant challenges, as has been widely discussed in literature. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are some tool-supported approaches provided by educators. These are often based on observations. However, comprehensive research on actual students’ requirements and aspirations for such tools has so been missing. The contribution of this paper will be a qualitative requirements elicitation for students requirements for tools to support teaching of UML diagrams in software engineering education.