A Survey of Formal Methods Courses in European Higher Education

The FME Subgroup on Education
(Convenor: J.N. Oliveira)
education@fmeurope.org

The Formal Methods Europe Association
http://www.fmeurope.org/

Accepted for presentation at the
COLOGNET/FORMAL METHODS EUROPE SYMPOSIUM ON TEACHING FORMAL METHODS 2004,
Ghent University, Belgium, Nov 18-19, 2004

Abstract:

This paper presents a survey of Formal Methods courses in European higher education carried out by the FME Subgroup on Education over the last two years. The survey data sample is made of 117 courses spreading over 58 higher-education institutions across 13 European countries and involving (at least) 91 academic staff.

A total number of 365 websites have been browsed which are accessible from the electronic (HTML) version of this paper in the form of links to course websites, lecturers and topic entries in encyclopedias or virtual libraries.

Three main projections of our sample are briefly analysed. Although far from being fully representative, these already provide some useful indicators about the impact of formal methods in European computing curricula.