Calls for Educators' Symposium

Model-driven development approaches and technologies for software-based systems, in which development is centered round the manipulation of models, raise the level of abstraction and thus, improve our abilities to develop complex systems. A number of languages (e.g., UML, Alloy), approaches (e.g., OMG's MDA, MIC, Multi-Modeling), and tools (e.g., Fujaba, GME, USE, OCLE) have been proposed for the model-driven development (MDD) of software-based systems.

Putting the model-driven development vision into practice requires not only sophisticated modeling approaches and tools, but also considerable training and education effort. Practitioners in industry and education/training specialists need to understand the principles underlying MDD, and the strengths and limitations of current MDD tools, techniques. Such understanding is needed for proper selection and use of MDD technologies in industrial software development projects.

Industry is striving to improve their practice of software development by adopting MDD. The adoption, nevertheless, is determined by the availability of skilled software engineers who have been educated and trained in modeling and model-driven development. MDD educators and trainers can influence the practices in industry by producing an increasing number of graduates with deep understanding of MDD principles, technologies and challenges.

The Educator's Symposium at the MODELS conference, the premier conference devoted to the topic of model-driven engineering of software-based systems, is intended as a forum in which educators and trainers can meet to discuss pedagogy, use of technology in the classroom, and share their experience pertaining to teaching modeling techniques and model-driven development.

In this fifth version of the symposium we would like to focus discussions on the resources needed to effectively educate future MDD practitioners. In particular, we would like to hear about efforts on developing community-based MDD education resources, that is, resources that allow educators in the MDD community to share, evaluate, and evolve education artifacts. These artifacts should be based upon synergies between industrial needs and academic education and research goals. We encourage papers on the following topics:

• Education artifacts that can be effectively shared through a community-based MDD resource
• Descriptions of existing community-based MDD education resources
• Plans for developing and maintaining community-based education resources

We also encourage papers of general interest, including papers on:

• Designing university courses at various levels with industrial needs in mind
• How to include industrial experiences into teaching modeling and MDD
• How to ensure and assess industrial relevance of the contents of modeling courses
• How to assess industrial relevance of the teaching/learning process
• How the teaching of modeling techniques influences industrial practices
• Methodology issues (how to teach modeling or MDD) with industry in mind
• Integrating modeling and MDD into the software engineering curriculum (how do they fit)
• Teaching modeling and MDD and associated tools (requirements, available tools)
• Experience reports from designing university courses in modeling with industrial focus
• Requirements from industry for university education in MDD
• Experiences from industry about university education in MDD
• Case studies on required skills for realizing the vision of MDD.

Important Dates

Hard Deadline for Submission: June 29, 2009
Notification of Acceptance: July 31, 2009
Symposium: October 6, 2009

Paper Submissions

Submit your manuscript electronically in PDF using the ACM template style.

The submitted papers should be no longer than 8 pages in length. Papers will undergo a thorough process of review by the program committee. The proceedings will be published as a technical report.

Please submit your paper via email to: edusymp@modelsconference.org.

It is planned that the authors of the best papers from the conference will be invited to revise and submit extended versions of their papers for publication consideration in a special issue of the Software and Systems Modeling journal at Springer.

Symposium Chairs

Martin Gogolla (gogolla@informatik.uni-bremen.de), University of Bremen, Germany
Robert France (france@cs.colostate.edu), Colorado State University, USA

Program Committee

Jordi Cabot, University of Toronto, Canada
Peter Clarke, Florida International University, USA
Jeff Gray, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Øystein Haugen, SINTEF and University of Oslo, Norway
Ludwik Kuzniarz, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
Timothy Lethbridge, University of Ottawa, Canada
Michał Smiałek, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland