Requirements and Architecture Modeling in Software Engineering Courses

Modeling of requirements and software architecture involves abstraction and critical reasoning that is the most complex stage of development. This knowledge area is the hardest for students to acquire within computer science curricula. The main problem is the fact that the full understanding of this knowledge may only be visible while developing and evolving large scale complex software systems. The learning strategy may have significant impact on students ability to capture this knowledge. On the other hand, we may need different learning strategies depending on the context of study programme and student's knowledge base. Here, in this paper, we present different strategies taken within software engineering courses but in different study programme context. We discuss lessons learned from two courses that belong to two different study programmes at Croatian Universities. Also, the deviate learning strategies involving approach and modeling tools and techniques used in these courses are different.