Instructional Design of Exercise-Centric Teaching Materials on UML Modeling

We have developed an instructional program for teaching literacy in the use of Unified Modeling Language (UML) modeling software at the University of Kitakyushu. In this paper, we show the instructional design of our teaching materials for the literacy, which students master as part of our program, and assess their effectiveness. Our strategies include three levels of instruction, each with numerous step-by-step exercises. The students learn 10 basic patterns of UML notation at level 1, composition of the notation at level 2, and creating UML system diagrams at level 3. We assess students achievement based on a rubric. Our teaching materials are effective: approximately 75 percent of 43 students met the criteria, albeit with some room for improvement.