A Survey of Tool Use in Modeling Education

Abstract

We present the results of a survey of tool use in software modeling education conducted from December 2016 to March 2017. The survey was conducted among 150 professors who taught modeling in 30 countries from all regions of the world. Professors reported using 32 modeling tools. Top motivations for choosing tools are simplicity of learning and installing, as well as the tools being free and supporting the most important notations. Top complaints about tools included not interacting with other tools, not supporting sufficient modeling aspects, and being complex to use. Seven of the tools were used by more than one professor as their main tools, and we analyzed these in more depth. Among these 7, lack of feedback about models emerged as another key weakness. The tools varied very considerably regarding which of these strengths and weaknesses they exhibited. The key lessons from the paper are a) that tool developers have many opportunities to improve their products, and b) that educators might benefit from introducing students to multiple different tools.