Towards an Open Repository for Teaching Software Modeling applying Active Learning Strategies Williamson Silva 1,2 , Bruno Gadelha 1 1 Instituto de Computação (IComp) Universidade Federal do Amazonas Manaus, AM - Brazil williamson, bruno {@icomp.ufam.edu.br} Igor Steinmacher 2 2 School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems Northern Arizona University Flagstaf, AZ - USA igor.steinmacher@nau.edu Tayana Conte 1 1 Instituto de Computação (IComp) Universidade Federal do Amazonas Manaus, AM - Brazil tayana@icomp.ufam.edu.br ABSTRACT Modeling is a core topic in Software Engineering Education. Nevertheless, students face difculties while learning software modeling. To teach software modeling effectively in computing courses, instructors who usually employed traditional methods could use active learning strategies. However, instructors are reluctant to change their teaching approaches due to several barriers that hinder the application of active learning strategies. Besides, relatively litle research addresses how to mitigate them. Te objective of this research is to help instructors implementing active learning strategies when teaching sofware modeling with UML diagrams. To achieve this objective, we conducted a Design Science Research (DSR). We proposed an artifact called OpenSMALS, an Open Repository for teaching Sofware Modeling applying Active Learning Strategies. OpenSMALS provides specifc guidelines on how instructors can apply these strategies and helping instructors to identify the active learning strategies best suit their teaching context. We performed four DSR Design Cycles—in four diferent universities—to evaluate and evolve OpenSMALS. Our results show that OpenSMALS satisfactorily reduced the barriers faced by instructors, and it achieved an appropriate maturity level to be adopted by other instructors. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Computing education; Computing education programs; Computer science education; • Sofware and its engineering → Sofware notations and tools → System description languages; Unifed Modeling Language (UML); Specifcation languages. KEYWORDS UML, Modeling Education, Software Engineering Education, Active Learning Strategies. ACM Reference format: Williamson Silva, Bruno Gadelha, Igor Steinmacher and Tayana Conte. 2019. Towards an Open Repository for Teaching Sofware Modeling from Active Learning Strategies. In Proceedings of 42nd International Conference on Sofware Engineering - Sofware Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET), May 23-29, Seoul, Republic of Korea. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 11 pages. htps://doi.org/10.1145/3377814.3381709 1 Introduction Software modeling is a key concept in Software Engineering Education (SEE) [1-2]. According to Agner et al. [2], software modeling enables an in-depth understanding of specific concepts or problems using different detail levels. However, instructors and researchers reported that students face difficulties while learning software modeling because of the complexity of its concepts when compared to other aspects of Software Engineering [3,4]. Besides, students find it difficult to abstract real-world concepts and representing them in a model [3,4]. The challenges faced by students may arise from the way that the software modeling has been taught [5]. According to Connolly et al. [6], students often find it challenging to work on problems that do not have a well-defined solution, in which problems are ambiguous and vague, or when they need to apply the classroom examples to different scenarios or domains. To learn how to solve modeling problems, students need hands-on experience with practical scenarios, which could come from participating in actual software projects, simulations, role-playing, case studies, or other experiential learning activities [7-10]. Therefore, instructors need to adapt their pedagogical strategies to provide students with a challenging environment that actively involves them in the learning process [11]. Educational researchers suggest using Active Learning (AL) aiming to provide students with new experiences and learning opportunities, improving students’ overall learning [12,13]. According to Bonwell and Eison [14], AL is typically defined as learning that requires students to engage cognitively and ∗ Article Title Footnote needs to be captured as Title Note † Author Footnote to be captured as Author Note Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). ICSE-SEET'20, May 23–29, 2020, Seoul, Republic of Korea © 2020 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-7124-7/20/05...$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3377814.3381709 162 2020 IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE- SEET)