The role of modeling in computational science education

Modeling and simulation skills are two core competences of computational science and thus should be a central part of any curriculum. While there is a well-founded methodology for the design of simulation algorithms today the teaching of modeling skills carries some intrinsic problems. The reason is that modeling is still partly an art and partly a science. As an important consequence for university education, the concepts for teaching modeling must be quite different from those for teaching simulation algorithms. Experiences made with the courses on ‘Modeling and Simulation’ at the University of Siegen are summarized and some general concepts for the teaching of modeling skills are presented. In particular, three practical approaches to modeling education are discussed with several examples.