Role of Ontology Training to Software Engineering Students
This work targets software engineering education to improve systems thinking, but it is incremental as it builds on existing ontology concepts without introducing new methods.
The paper addresses the challenge of software engineering students lacking a systems perspective by proposing ontology training as a solution, and it describes the course content for such training.
Students of software engineering struggle to develop a systems perspective because most of the software engineering methodologies focus on developing a particular aspect of a system. Lack of unified coverage to the topic of systems modelling is identified as the root cause behind this problem. The paper explains the role of ontology in building systems perspective. A case for the necessity of ontology training as a means to overcome this problem is presented. The course content for a typical course on ontology is also described in the paper.