Tool-supported teaching of UML diagrams in software engineering education - A systematic literature review

There is hardly a university that does not offer a course in software engineering for computer scientists. Due to the expanding complexity of software systems and rapidly changing requirements, it has become increasingly difficult to teach students all the content they need for their professional careers in the industry or academia. Additionally, teaching modelling with modelling languages like UML is a sophisticated task for educators. Student-generated solutions may be visually different from a sample solution and still be correct. Regarding large software engineering courses, individual feedback for students is usually not possible or comes with a time delay. However, it would contribute to their learning success. Therefore, a rising number of software tools can be found to support this area of teaching. In this paper, a systematic literature review is presented. It follows the methodology of Kitchenham and provides an overview about the tools, that are used to support teaching of modelling in higher software engineering education. Alongside the functionalities and their differences, this literature review summarizes the difficulties, that motivated educators to develop these tools.