| dc.description.abstract | The following thesis presents an evaluation of pedagogical practices supporting collaborative learning for model-based system development courses, and focuses on answering two research questions: 1) What are the challenges and possibilities when using a collaborative learning approach for teaching modelling and architecture? 2) What are the challenges and benefits of having a holistic approach to model-based system development courses in light of the requirements of academia and the needs of industry? The term “holistic” in context of this thesis is understood in two ways. Firstly, it is seen as an approach that involves human factors (users), technology and processes. Secondly, it describes an approach to teaching Model-Based System Development courses where modelling for Enterprise Architecture is taught together with System Architecture and Model-Driven Language Engineering. This thesis presents the results of observations and analyses of students learning on a holistic Model-Based System Development course - INF5120 - taught at the University of Oslo during the spring of 2018 and 2019. This thesis advocates setting modelling in a holistic course setting which aims to teach students modelling techniques and tools through the whole lifecycle of the project, from business architecture, requirements, system architecture and software architecture, to executable models that take advantages of platform-based development, all with a foundation in domain-specific languages developed and supported through model-based language engineering methods and tools. This study presents three different course perspectives of Modeling for Enterprise Architecture: Business Architecture, System Architecture and Model-Driven Language Engineering. The motivation of this study is to understand and analyse how effective the current practice of teaching and learning modeling and model-based system development is in university settings through these three perspectives, and to offer some pedagogical insights and lessons learnt from this. Moreover, this thesis aims to be a starting point for building a bridge between academia and industry in order to prepare students for professional involvement in the domain of model-based system development and architecture. Empirical learning data was collected through interviews, observations, document analysis and a survey questionnaire. The main conclusion is that the three different course perspectives are essential parts of a modeling curriculum and that these might be combined in different ways, or embedded into other courses, in order to optimize student learning experiences. An additional conclusion is that industry sees the potential of having junior architects, but there is a set of constraints on what they can do. Inexperienced junior architects are seen as providing support to a team, solving small architectural tasks to gain experience. But at the beginning, they do not have a mandate to make independent decisions. | eng |