The MDE Diploma: first international postgraduate specialization in model-driven engineering

Abstract

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is changing the way we build, operate, and maintain our software-intensive systems. Several projects using MDE practices are reporting significant improvements in quality and performance but, to be able to handle these projects, software engineers need a set of technical and interpersonal skills that are currently not widely available. The MDE postgraduate diploma intends to fill this gap by offering a full-time one year formation onMDE. The course syllabus is designed to teach students how to work at a higher abstraction level by the rigorous use of (software) models as the main artifacts in all software engineering activities. Contents include the conceptual framework of MDE plus all techniques and tools (e.g. for defining modeling languages, models, and model transformations) required to successfully complete software engineering projects following a MDE approach. The organizational impact (and challenges) of adopting MDE are exemplified using real industrial experiences. This article describes the MDE Diploma and the lessons that we learned after completing its first edition.

Keywords:

• model-driven engineering
• master
• postgraduate
• lessons learned

Notes

1.  http://www.mines-nantes.fr/fr/Formations/Formation-specialisee/MDE

2. See also some online references to MDE materials here: http://modeling-languages.com/who-teaching-model-driven-engineering/

3.  http://www.emn.fr/x-info/atlanmod/

4. The reason for creating the MDE Diploma as a post-master was a pragmatic one: the process of creating a post-master is much simpler, in terms of paperwork, than the process required to create a master. This has been beneficial in the short-term but affects the attraction of new students as discussed in Section 6.

5. We had some flexibility on the number of class hours per day since the students were attending the courses full-time. Therefore, we decided to extend the schedule for some days and move from 360 to 430 course hours in order to make room for the project.

6. It is an estimate because we did not precisely record the time of each session; the number reflects the union of individual sessions by each core lecturer.

7. We should clarify that this is the solution preferred by the company but not by the company employees that strongly prefer the idea of focusing solely on the diploma during that period; when asked their view on these intermediate solutions all mentioned it was not realistic to think that they would be able to actually book some time while working in the company to dedicate it to the diploma.

8.  http://www.learnmde.org/