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.
