Evaluation of Formal Method Usage amongst Babcock University Students in Nigeria

Abstract

The knowledge of Formal Methods involves techniques and tools that are based on mathematics but most students tend to have poor approach in applying these techniques during software systems developmental processes despite all the potentials that using formal methods possess in designing systems that are error free, robust and more reliable. This study was conducted to evaluate formal methods usability among students and to enable them understand how important it is to embrace this technique in building highly reliable systems and for the academia to work more on bridging the gap between research and industries so as to promote the use of formal methods in software engineering companies. In this paper, the benefits that Formal Methods has to offer in the area of Software Development was explored including present challenges affecting their usability, the present level of awareness and usage amongst students of computer science who have acute interest in software engineering was also evaluated. The research was done quantitatively using a pilot study of students selected conveniently from Babcock University, Ilisan, Nigeria Computer Science students. A usability evaluation model was used in designing the measuring tool focusing on awareness, learnability, ease of use and willingness to use formal methods in their Research works and they were evaluated using descriptive statistical method. The measuring tool was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0. Reliability test was done and found to be 0.906 which indicated a high internal consistency. The result of the analysis shows that if formal methods is easy to learn, then students will find it easy to use and the willingness to use it for their projects will be there. If they are willing to use it, then learnability and ease of use will also be high. Conclusion and Recommendations were also given at the end of the Research analysis.