Student activity diagrams in the business informatics: a study of perception and defects during their creation

Introduction. Successful mastery of the object-oriented modeling methodology of business processes requires students of Business Informatics to invest significant time and effort in practical activities. How do students of this specialty perceive UML activity diagrams? Why do the models they create contain defects that reduce the quality of the diagrams? Does the defects number in the model depend on the education level of its author? The purpose of the study is to find answers to these pressing questions that will help adjust the training of business informaticians in creating activity diagrams and developing their sustainable professional modeling competencies.

Materials and methods. A survey of students in the disciplines of object-oriented analysis and design was conducted on the degree of complexity of perception of activity diagrams and the prospects for their further use. The responses of 363 respondents were studied. The pedagogical experiment was carried on a corpus of 124 activity diagrams created by bachelor's and master's degree program students majoring in Business Informatics and related fields. The classification of defects, the search for a relationship between the defects number of different classes, as well as between the complexity measure of the model and the defects number in it were performed out. Statistical and correlation analysis was performed using open source software.

Results. Business process models are generally not perceived by students as easy to create and necessary in practical activities. However, future business analysts plan to use them in practice first and foremost. The hypotheses in normality testing of the defects number samples in the models of bachelor's and master's degree program students, including by classes of defects, as well as samples of the complexity measure of these diagrams, were not confirmed. Rank correlation was used, which showed the existence of a statistically significant positive relationship between the defects number of different classes, taking into account the education level of the authors of the models, as well as between the defects number in model and its complexity.

Discussion and conclusions. Survey data processing showed that students perceive activity diagrams as a complex type of models, and business informaticians understand their importance in analytical work. Bachelor's and master's degree program students experience similar difficulties when creating business process models. An element of activity diagrams has been identified, which is the main source of defects. Master's degree students with a Bachelor of Business Informatics degree were unable to create defect-free models. This indicates the use of incorrect modeling patterns by substituting the concepts of the analysis stage with the concepts of the information system design stage. Elimination of the identified causes of defects in activity diagrams during the learning process will contribute to improving the quality of the latter and developing the corresponding competencies in students.

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