A Method for Assisting Novices Creating Class Diagrams Based on the Instructor's Class Layout

TL;DR

This paper presents a method and tool that automatically converts learners' class diagram layouts to instructor layouts, providing effective feedback to improve modeling accuracy in software development education.

Contribution

It introduces a novel automatic layout conversion technique to assist novices in creating accurate class diagrams during exercises.

Findings

Automatic layout conversion improves learner understanding.

The tool effectively indicates correctness of class diagram artifacts.

Learners showed improved diagram accuracy after using the tool.

Abstract

Nowadays, modeling exercises on software development objects are conducted in higher education institutions for information technology. Not only are there many defects such as missing elements in the models created by learners during the exercises, but the layout of elements in the class diagrams often differs significantly from the correct answers created by the instructors. In this paper, we focus on the above problem and propose a method to provide effective support to learners during modeling exercises by automatically converting the layout of the learner's class diagram to that of the instructor, in addition to indicating the correctness of the artifacts to the learners during the exercises. The proposed method was implemented and evaluated as a tool, and the results indicate that the automatic layout conversion was an effective feedback to the learners.