Analogical Thinking Based Instruction Method in IT Professional Education

In designing a new teaching system, a challenging issue is how the system intelligently supports learners. This paper describes a methodology and a system design on the intelligent instruction support for software engineering education. For information science courses at a university, software engineering subjects are usually compulsory and students study dominant conceptions of implementation like software architecture, and the methodology of software design in software engineering lectures. To enhance learners' understanding, the authors design a novel instructional model based on the analogical thinking theory. The analogical thinking-based instruction consists of concrete teaching methods like analogy dropping method, self role-play method, and the anthropomorphic thinking method. Questionnaires for learners after the instructions give results of effective education in an actual trial. The contribution of this paper is to provide a new instruction theory, the way of educational practice method, and implementation of the system.