Teaching Formal Methods: From Software in the Small to Software in the Large

• Published in: Formal Methods Teaching pp. 97 - 110
• Main Authors: Gallardo, María-del-Mar, Panizo, Laura
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• ISBN: 3030324400; 9783030324407
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-32441-4_7

In this paper, we report the author’s experience teaching formal methods to undergraduate students in the fourth year of the Software Engineering degree at the University of Málaga. The subject is divided into three blocks devoted to explaining the application of formal methods at different abstraction levels during the process of developing software. Although we teach the theoretical basis for students to understand the techniques, we mainly focus on the practical application of formal methods. Students are asked to realize in pairs three modelling and specifying projects of medium size (one for each block). The practical work corresponds to \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$60 \%$$\end{document} of the student assessment, the remaining \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$40 \%$$\end{document} is assessed with an exam on the theory of the subject matter. We have been teaching the subject during the last five years with very good results.