Formal methods originated as a means for the rigorous construction of software systems. While formal methods are increasingly being used in industry in recent years, university curricula are not adapting at the same pace. Some existing formal methods classes interest and challenge students, whereas others fail to ignite student motivation. In particular, after the pandemic, student engagement has not returned to the status quo ante. It is thus important to develop, share, and discuss approaches to effectively teach formal methods to the next generations.

We envision this event as a one-day combination of keynote and workshop presentations, where various models of teaching are presented and explored, together with innovative approaches relevant to educators of Formal Methods in the 21st century.

FMTea'24 is organized by FME’s Teaching Committee. Our broad aim is to support a worldwide improvement in learning Formal Methods, mainly by teaching but also via self-learning. To that end, we have already gathered a list of FM courses taught worldwide (https://fme-teaching.github.io) and plan to collect other resources as well, such as FM case studies, FM inspirational papers, etc. Furthermore, the FME Teaching Committee coordinates a tutorial series held online. Tutorials are collected on the FME Teaching Committee website (https://fme-teaching.github.io/).

• Leila Ribeiro (co-chair), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
• Emil Sekerinski (co-chair), McMaster University, Canada
• Erika Ábrahám, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
• Sandrine Blazy, University of Rennes 1, France
• Brijesh Dongol, University of Surrey, UK
• Catherine Dubois, ENSIIE, France
• João F. Ferreira, INESC-ID & IST, University of Lisbon, Portugal
• Markus Kuppe, Microsoft, US
• Thierry Lecomte, CLEARSY, France
• Michael Leuschel, University of Düsseldorf, Germany
• Alexandra Mendes, INESC TEC & Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Portugal
• Tim Nelson, Brown University, US
• David Pearce, ConsenSys & Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
• Luigia Petre, Åbo Akademi University, Finland
• Pierluigi San Pietro, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• Graeme Smith, The University of Queensland, Australia

The first conference on Teaching Formal Methods, TFM 2004 (archived), took place in November 2024 in Ghent, Belgium, with proceedings published as Springer LNCS 3294.

The second International FME Conference on Teaching Formal Methods, TFM 2009, affiliated with the 16th International Symposium on Formal Methods, FM 2009, took place in November 2009 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, with proceedings published as Springer LNCS 5846.

The third Formal Methods Teaching Workshop and Tutorial, FMTea 2019, affiliated with the 3rd World Congress on Formal Methods, FM'19, took place in October 2019 in Porto, Portugal, with proceedings as Springer LNCS 11758.

The FMTea 2021 workshop, affiliated with the 24th International Symposium on Formal Methods, FM 2021, Beijing, China, was held online in November 2021, with proceedings published as Springer LNCS 13122.

The FMTea 2023 workshop, affiliated with the 25th International Symposium on Formal Methods, FM 2023, Lübeck, was held on in March 2023, with proceedings published as Springer LNCS 13962.

Several related events focused on teaching aspects for Formal Methods were held in the 2000s:

• Two BCS-FACS TFM Workshops (Oxford, UK in 2003 and London, UK in 2006),
• The FM-Ed 2006 Workshop (Hamilton, Canada, co-located with FM 2006),
• The FORMED 2008 Workshop, (Budapest, Hungary, co-located with ETAPS 2008), and
• The FMET 2008 Workshop, proceedings (archived) (Kitakyushu, Japan, co-located with ICFEM 2008 (archived))

FMTea'24 invites high-quality papers reporting on opinions, approaches, and experiences related to the topic of teaching Formal Methods. We aim to attract papers detailing authors’ experiences with FM Teaching. We welcome papers discussing the successes and failures of various methods, case studies, tools, etc. As self-learning is an emerging aspect of formal methods, we appreciate experiences with online teaching, including experiences with teaching formal methods via MOOCs. A non-exhaustive list of topics of interest for the FMTea'24 workshop is below:

• Experiences and proposals related to "traditional" and online FM learning and teaching
• Integrating and embedding formal methods within other computer science courses
• Integrating/embedding FM teaching/thinking within other computer science courses
• Teaching formal methods for industry
• Innovative learning and teaching methods, like automated grading and automated feedback using Large Language Models
• Student projects, including group projects

Software development is transforming into a rigorous engineering discipline. Improved teaching techniques will ensure that FM is at the heart of this transformation process.

Submission Details

Each submitted paper will be reviewed by at least three PC members. All submissions must be original, unpublished, and not submitted for publication elsewhere.

The proceedings will be published in the Formal Methods Teaching series of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science, https://link.springer.com/conference/tfm. We are exploring an open-access publication and expect to make an announcement shortly.

Submissions must be in PDF format, using the Springer LNCS style files (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines). We suggest to use the LaTeX2e package (the llncs.cls class file, available in llncs2e.zip and the typeinst.dem available in typeinst.zip as a template for your contribution). Papers should not exceed 15 pages (including references) in length. Submissions should be made using the FMTea 2024 Easychair web site:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fmtea2024

All accepted papers must be presented at the workshop. Their authors must be prepared to sign a copyright transfer statement. At least one author of each accepted paper must register to the conference by an early date, to be indicated by the FM 2024 organizers, and present the paper.

Important Dates – Updated

• 24 May 2024: Deadline for submission of abstracts
• 30 May 2024: Deadline for submission of papers
• 28 June 2024: Notifications to authors
• 19 July 2024: Deadline for camera-ready version
• 10 September 2024: FMTea'24 Workshop