Teaching Formal Methods: An Experience Report

The general attitude of students towards formal specification and verification of systems is not exactly what one could call enthusiastic. Generally, software engineering courses at universities include an introduction to specification with formal notations such as Z, Alloy, UML, etc. However, it seems that the importance of formal specification to replicate expected system behavior does not sink in as it should with the students. Moreover, other products of computer science (e.g., machine learning algorithms, robot systems deployment), rather than software, benefit from formal specification as well. This paper is a general report of our observations on teaching formal methods on undergraduate and graduate levels at Politecnico di Milano.