Exploring influences on student adherence to test-driven development

Buffardi, Kevin; Edwards, Stephen H.

doi:10.1145/2325296.2325324

Cited by 26 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Students' project code identified some behaviors that violate TDD principles. Furthermore, our survey linked poor attitudes toward some aspects of TDD as a reason for non-adherence [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Impacts of adaptive feedback on teaching test-driven development

Buffardi

Edwards

2013

Proceeding of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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Studies have found that following Test-Driven Development (TDD) can improve code and testing quality. However, a preliminary investigation was consistent with concerns raised by other educators about programmers resisting TDD. In this paper, we describe an adaptive, pedagogical system for tracking and encouraging students' adherence to TDD. Along with an empirical evaluation of the system, we discuss challenges and opportunities for persuading student behavior through adaptive technology.

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“…Students' project code identified some behaviors that violate TDD principles. Furthermore, our survey linked poor attitudes toward some aspects of TDD as a reason for non-adherence [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Impacts of adaptive feedback on teaching test-driven development

Buffardi

Edwards

2013

Proceeding of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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“…Several independent accounts have indicated a special need to motivate programmers to adhere to the test-first technique [7] [16] [17]. In addition, traditional evaluations of school programming projects only account for a single deliverable.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effective and ineffective software testing behaviors by novice programmers

Buffardi

Edwards

2013

Proceedings of the Ninth Annual International ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research

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This data-driven paper quantitatively evaluates software testing behaviors that students exhibited in introductory computer science courses. The evaluation includes data collected over five years (10 semesters) from 49,980 programming assignment submissions by 883 different students. To examine the effectiveness of software testing behaviors, we investigate the quality of their testing at different stages of their development. We partition testing behaviors into four groups according to when in their development they first achieve substantial (at least 85%) test coverage.The study reveals significant results regarding effective and ineffective testing behaviors. A within-subjects comparison finds that higher coverage in early development is associated with higher quality code and with completing work earlier. Post-hoc analysis also suggests that the relationship between early testing and positive outcomes is independent of time management and effects of individuals' abilities. However, roughly 76% of students exhibit different testing behaviors on different assignments, demonstrating an opportunity to foster better, more consistent testing habits among computer science students.

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“…Other research has investigated the impact of techniques such as Test-Driven Development (TDD) and continuous integration in students' group assignment work [11]. In 2012, Buffardi and Edwards [12] found that students' adherence to desirable development behaviours was related to how helpful they found them (and hence, we would argue, to the problems resulting from not following those behaviours).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comparison of two iterations of a software studio course based on continuous integration

Billingsley

Steel

2013

Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

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In previous work we introduced a software studio course in which seventy students used continuous integration practices to collaborate on a common legacy code base. This enabled students to experience the issues of realistically sized software projects, and learn and apply appropriate techniques to overcome them, in a course without significant extra staffing. Although the course was broadly successful in its goals, it received a mixed response from students, and our paper noted several issues to overcome. This paper considers experimental changes to the course in light of our previous findings, and additional data from the official student surveys. Two iterations of the course and their respective results are compared. Whereas our previous paper addressed the feasibility of such a course, this paper considers how the student experience can be improved. The paper also considers how such a course can be adapted for more heterogeneous cohorts, such as the introduction of an unknown number of design and database students, or the introduction of online students.

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Exploring influences on student adherence to test-driven development

Cited by 26 publications

References 17 publications

Impacts of adaptive feedback on teaching test-driven development

Impacts of adaptive feedback on teaching test-driven development

Effective and ineffective software testing behaviors by novice programmers

A comparison of two iterations of a software studio course based on continuous integration

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