Paper Info
Title
Experiences on teaching alloy with an automated assessment platform
Abstract
AbstractHighlights •Alloy is a specification language taught in several graduate formal methods courses.•Alloy4Fun is a web application for online editing and sharing of Alloy models.•It supports the creation of challenges with auto grading.•Creators can mine student submission for monitoring progress, supported by platform.•It has been used in graduate courses for 3 years, we report on lessons learned. AbstractThis paper presents Alloy4Fun, a web application that enables online editing and sharing of Alloy models and instances (including dynamic ones developed with the Electrum extension), to be used mainly in an educational context. By introducing secret paragraphs and commands in the models, Alloy4Fun allows the distribution and automated assessment of simple specification challenges, a mechanism that enables students to learn the language at their own pace. Alloy4Fun stores all versions of shared and analyzed models, as well as derivation trees that depict how they evolved over time: this wealth of information can be mined by researchers or tutors to identify, for example, learning breakdowns in the class or typical mistakes made by Alloy users. A data analysis library is also provided to support this process. Alloy4Fun has been used in formal methods graduate courses for 3 years and for the latest editions we present results regarding its adoption by the students, as well as preliminary insights regarding the most common bottlenecks when learning Alloy (and Electrum).
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1016/j.scico.2021.102690
Periodicals
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Teaching formal methods, Alloy, Automated assessment
Journal
211
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
C
0167-6423
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Nuno Macedo113415.88
Alcino Cunha229827.55
José Pereira300.34
Renato Carvalho401.01
Ricardo Silva500.34
Ana C. R. Paiva614518.69
Miguel Sozinho Ramalho700.34
Daniel Castro Silva85113.31