New method for summative evaluation of UML class diagrams based on graph similarities

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of the evaluation of the student's productions during the construction of a UML class diagram from textual speciations, which can be a tedious task for teachers. The main objective is to propose a method of summative and semi-automatic evaluation of the class diagrams produced by the students, in order to provide an educational reaction on the learning process, and to reduce the evaluation work for the teachers. To achieve this objective, we must analyze these productions and study the transformation, matching, similarity measurement and comparison of several UML graphs. From this study, we adopted a method based on the comparison and matching of the components of several UML diagrams. This proposal is applied to evaluate UML class diagrams and focuses on the structural and semantic aspects of the UML graph produced by students compared to several solutions proposed by the teacher.