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The educational focus in software development has been changing from
programming of small solutions to modeling, construction, and deconstruction of object
oriented systems in informatics. Furthermore, educators and researchers have emphasized
the idea of leveraging software development education based on fundamental ideas and
modeling techniques. Rather than considering a model a representation of theory as
mathematicians do; in software engineering a model has traditionally been referred to as
an artifact represented through a modeling language, such as Unified Modeling Language
(UML). Such a model describes a system through the various diagram types. Through revision of literature I identified a need to incorporate into the curriculum and into educational experiences introduction of fundamentals of software analysis and design with the aim of enabling students with the ability to apply design and development principles in the construction of software systems of varying complexity. Therefore, by analyzing the learning context, the learner characteristics, the learning task, and the assessment, I implemented learning experiences that will leverage students’ ability to apply object oriented analysis and design techniques to the expression of software models (i.e. fundamental computer concepts) using the UML as a mean to reach the end. Therefore, the development of this instructional module was based on research findings and theory. Doing this document not only gave me an opportunity to reinforce my skills as instructional designer, but also to reinforce my knowledge in object oriented modeling. |