Leveraging the pedagogical potential of tile-based games for teaching petri net modeling, the sokoban case

• Autor(es): Gomes, Luís ; Barros, João Paulo
• Data: 2024
• Origem: Repositório Institucional do IPBeja
• Assunto(s): Board games; Modeling; Formal methods; Education; Reachability graph; Petri nets
• Tipo de Documento: Comunicação em conferência
• Idioma: Inglês

Descrição

Students face unfamiliar abstract concepts when learning about formal methods and Petri net modeling. These concepts are challenging for students to understand fully and for teachers to design captivating modeling exercises that align with the intended learning outcomes. The proposed exercises should provide significant opportunities to apply abstract concepts in familiar domains, bridging the gap between the concrete and the abstract. Board games offer a range of modeling problems in an area that many students know. This paper introduces a model for Sokoban, a classic computer-based, one-player puzzle game. After, a sequence of possible Petri net modeling exercises focused on the game movement rules and model composition are proposed. The complete model is created by composing multiple instances of the previously defined models acting as modules. The complete model can then be used to verify game termination and obtain the net step sequence leading to the intended final net marking.