Is It Better to Learn from Problems or Erroneous Examples?

Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a modeling standard that has been commonly used in the software industry. However, students face difficulties while learning how to model complete and correct UML diagrams. One of the reasons is the way UML has been taught. In order to improve the effectiveness of learning it is necessary to employ methods in which the students actively take part in the learning process. This paper describes an empirical study that evaluates two teaching methods: Problem Based Learning (PBL) and Learning from Erroneous Examples (ErrEx). We compared these methods by assessing the degree of correctness and completeness of the produced diagrams. We analyzed students' perceptions about each method. The quantitative results showed that the diagrams created using both methods presented similar level of correctness and completeness. The qualitative results showed that students found PBL easier when learning UML diagrams. Results showed that students found PBL easier when learning UML diagrams.