Towards a Software Product Line Architecture to Build M-learning Applications for the Teaching of Programming

Software Product Line (SPL) is concerned with the sharing of common features within a family of products. It offers benefits, proven in several industry success cases. Regardless of its success, such a reuse-based development methodology has not been well explored in educational fields yet, as mobile platforms. In a different but related perspective, several initiatives have been undertaken as an attempt to improve the teaching of programming; however, no reuse approaches have been considered. In this paper we discuss the most significant approaches and methodologies for the conception of an SPL architecture according to the specificities of mobile devices and the teaching of programming. As main contributions, we highlight the identification of a set of approaches that support the conduction of the initial SPL processes, the design of a conceptual architecture model, and its qualitative evaluation with stakeholders. Keywords-Mobile learning; software architecture; software product line engineering; teaching of programming.