Active Learning Facilitates Success of Formal Methods in Practice

Software development does not consist only of technical activities, as it usually regarded. It also involves social and cognitive activities that are particularly important in complex projects. To make a software development project successful the staff involved should possess the necessary social and cognitive skills. The significance of such skills increases if some novel, advanced techniques, including formal methods, are used in the project. So, if we wish to leverage successful applications of formal methods, we need to train engineers and students not only in the techniques, but also in the social skills required to apply those techniques in real practice. Active learning methods seem to be very suitable for formal methods education, since they help to provide students with both kinds of necessary skills – the technical ones due to the content and the social and cognitive ones due to the form of the learning process.