Theoretical Background to Implement STEM-Driven Approaches

In this chapter, we first motivate the needs of automation, focusing on three dimensions, i.e. the growth of diversity, complexity and software content in designing educational systems. Next, knowing this context, we introduce the theoretical basis to implement the automation in STEM-driven CS education. This basis includes two parts. The first is about feature-based analysis, modelling and feature model transformations typically applied to the problem domain. All these we borrowed from software engineering. The second part includes the basics of heterogeneous meta-programming techniques. We extend those techniques by introducing new types of heterogeneous meta-programs that represent our efforts to move from the component-level meta-programming to the system-level to design such systems as the generative scenario creator for STEM. However, this approach requires a more extensive research, though we implemented and tested the approach practically. A more thorough analysis of the system-level meta-programming is beyond the scope of this book.

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