The Working Group's Agenda

Although there is now plenty of materials and software available (for example see http://www.cs.indiana.edu/formal-methods-education/), there seems to be little or no coherent guidance and help on

• how to design a formal methods course
• how to manage the teaching, learning and assessment of formal methods
• how (and why) to use software

The FMWG will clearly define each of these aspects and survey the field to summarize the tools and techniques in common use.

Three major goals of the FMWG will be to assist computing educators to:

1. clarify the reasons for using software in the teaching and learning of formal methods
2. identify learning outcomes relating to formal methods and software
3. decide on appropriate teaching/learning strategies

As part of this, the working group participants will investigate

• The use of software specifically designed to teach formal methods.
• The use of general purpose software such as Mathematica.
• The use of standard formal methods tools in teaching/learning formal methods.
• Education to encourage the effective use of standard tools in formal methods.

In preparing the deliverables, the FMWG will survey existing research so that they can describe current knowledge and suggest areas for further investigation. One starting point for investigating this area is The Formal Methods Educational Materials Repository (http://www.cs.indiana.edu/formal-methods-education/), a collection of pointers to course pages, tools, examples, and reading materials for formal methods courses. Although this repository is fairly comprehensive it does not provide much guidance to the newcomer, and indeed may well add to an educator's sense of confusion or of being overwhelmed!

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Change History:

• 25 May 2000: Baseline version drawn from CFP.html