More Programming Than Programming: Teaching Formal Methods in a Software Engineering Programme

TL;DR

This paper describes a programming-intensive approach using Dafny to teach formal methods, which improved student engagement, retention, and course evaluations in a software engineering program.

Contribution

It introduces a novel teaching method that integrates solver-aided programming to make formal methods more accessible and engaging for students.

Findings

Increased student retention in formal methods course.

Improved course evaluations over ten years.

Enhanced student understanding through instant feedback.

Abstract

Formal methods for software correctness are critical to the future of software engineering - and so must be an essential part of software engineering education. Unfortunately, formal methods are often resisted by students due to perceived difficulty, mathematicity, and practical irrelevance. We redeveloped our software correctness course by taking a programming intensive approach, using the solver-aided language Dafny to provide instant formative feedback via automated assessment. Our redeveloped course increased student retention and resulted in the best evaluation for the course for at least ten years.