Shorten lecture on feature modeling

[ekuiter]

Currently the lecture on feature modeling (4) is usually too long to fit into a typical time slot of ninety minutes. I usually only explain the first two blocks of the lecture and move the third block into the exercise, to leave room for the interactions, where students draw a feature model for the first time.

Probably, we need to shorten the lecture a little bit. Alternatively, we could create a variant of the lecture, so the lecturer can choose which variant to use (personally, I actually like splitting it up into both lecture and exercise, but this may not work for everyone).

Candidates for removal:

• CNF/DIMACS (not too relevant)
• Configurators in the Wild (nice motivation, maybe move elsewhere?)
• AllSAT (only theoretically relevant)
• 'the road so far and beyond"

[tthuem]

This probably already relevant for the Paderborn edition in May and I would prefer if we apply a solution for that edition already.

[tthuem]

Some thoughts:

• The second part contains numerous occurences of the diagram showing the translations. We could probably reduce the time by having less of these diagrams or only relevant arrows/parts thereof.
• The DIMACS format has only one slide and I would go over this very fast. We could mark this slide as optional content to indicate it is nothing they have to learn for the exam.
• The second interation (after Part 4b) is quite extensive and I think a motivating task would be better suited. What about n example feature model with a dead feature and the question why this model is problematic. Afterwards we are explaining in detail how to detect those cases. Or maybe even better: a void feature model.
• The "... and Beyond" box is interesting but maybe too much for the students, but we can certainly skip it easily (leaving the students with many terms that have never been explained).
• Interaction 4c could be removed/skipped completely