Experiences in threading UML throughout a computer science program

The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY, decided to standardize its computer science program on the unified modeling language (UML) for all software design representations. Converting the appropriate courses to support formal teaching or reinforcement of UML concepts was planned as a phased approach over four academic years. Formal UML instruction was planned for Computer Science 1 courses and the senior two-course software engineering capstone sequence. Reinforcement of UML would be in the intervening courses. Once implementation began, it became apparent that a prolonged period between formal blocks of instruction was insufficient. Instead, some additional courses were redesigned to support formal UML instruction. The end result was a richer and deeper exposure to UML than anticipated over the same timeframe.