Experiences on teaching alloy with an automated assessment platform

Abstract

This paper presents Alloy4Fun, a web application that enables online editing and sharing of Alloy models and instances (including dynamic ones developed with the Electrum extension), to be used mainly in an educational context. By introducing secret paragraphs and commands in the models, Alloy4Fun allows the distribution and automated assessment of simple specification challenges, a mechanism that enables students to learn the language at their own pace. Alloy4Fun stores all versions of shared and analyzed models, as well as derivation trees that depict how they evolved over time: this wealth of information can be mined by researchers or tutors to identify, for example, learning breakdowns in the class or typical mistakes made by Alloy users. A data analysis library is also provided to support this process. Alloy4Fun has been used in formal methods graduate courses for 3 years and for the latest editions we present results regarding its adoption by the students, as well as preliminary insights regarding the most common bottlenecks when learning Alloy (and Electrum).