Effectiveness of Model-Driven Development in conceptual modeling education for university freshmen

The purpose of this study is to explore educational methods for conceptual modeling for novices. In this research, the subjects are mainly freshmen in university. Model driven development (MDD) and a domain specific language (DSL) are key factors in this study. By using MDD, learners are expected to be able to evaluate their own model by observing the target device´s behavior. By using a DSL, teachers can control the difficulty of the problems given to their learners. In this paper, we describe our research approach using MDD and a DSL, then, show our experiment design and results. We also discuss the effectiveness of MDD in university freshmen courses with proposed educational methodology.