Towards the use of an automatic assessment system in the teaching of software testing

Souza, Diogo de; Oliveira, Bruno Henrique de; Maldonado, José Carlos; Souza, Simone do Rocio Senger de; Barbosa, Ellen F.

doi:10.1109/fie.2014.7044375

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Several (76%) of the students have designed different testing behaviors on different assignments, leading to good habits among students. Souza et al [10,5] believe that the integration of testing concepts and programming courses can improve the learning process in students. Then, the studies propose and validate a web-based tool that sets an environment in which students can submit their solution for a given problem, and then, their solution is "tested" against the reference program's.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Teaching testing techniques and criteria in the very beginning of programming courses may represent an effective practice to improve students' skills [5]. Conceptually, Software Testing is the dynamic process of executing a software product (or a software module) aiming at checking whether it corresponds to its specifications, considering the environment in which it was designed [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Testing techniques and criteria provide systematic ways to find conditions to raise the probability of finding errors. Several researchers have been studying the application of testing practices in conjunction with programming fundamentals in programming courses [5,7,4]. Implementing this practice may lead to gains under two aspects: (1) supporting students to learn technical programming language concepts more quickly, and (2) creating the habit of applying testing techniques in their systems under development earlier.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evaluation and assessment of effects on exploring mutation testing in programming courses

Oliveira

Cafeo³

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)

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Mutation analysis is a testing strategy that consists of using supporting tools to seed artificial faults in the original code of a software under test, generating faulty programs ("mutants") that are supposed to produce incorrect outputs. Novice programmers suffer of a wide range of deficits due to defective training processes. We argue that the incorporation of experiences on mutation testing in programming courses adds valuable knowledge to the learning process. In this paper we evaluate the effects of using mutation testing to improve the learning process of students in programming courses. We present results of experiments and analysis involving undergraduate students. These experiments are the continuation of a previous work in which we raise empirical evidences that the adequate incorporation of mutation testing in programming courses contributes to form an effective environment that fosters learning. To do so, we provide a mutation testing tool to promote the practice of mutation testing by novice programmers. Through practical experiences and several analysis survey we measured the effects of using the mutation testing criterion to teach programming. In addition, we collected the opinion of senior students who already knew mutation testing concepts about their opinion on the usage of mutation concepts to teach novice programmers. Our findings reveal that the effective use of mutation analysis concepts contributes to the learning process, making students see the code as a product under development that is the result of a careful manual coding process which they need for measuring and predicting the effect of each command. The main contributions discussed in this paper are: (1) presenting results of an empirical analysis involving undergraduate students, thus giving us preliminary evidence on the effects of the novel practice;(2) exposing possible practices to explore mutation testing in programming classes, highlighting the limitations and strengths of such strategy; and (3) a mutation testing tool for educational purposes.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evaluation and assessment of effects on exploring mutation testing in programming courses

Oliveira

Cafeo³

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)

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“…ProgTest [5] uses two sets of code and test cases, one provided by the student and one provided by the tool or the instructor. ProgTest runs the student's tests against both their own code and the code provided by the tool and runs the tests provided by the tool against the student's code.…”

Section: Previous Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of Inquiry-Based Conceptual Feedback vs. Traditional Detailed Feedback Mechanisms in Software Testing Education: An Empirical Investigation

Cordova

Carver

Walia

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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The feedback provided by current testing education tools about the deficiencies in a student's test suite either mimics industry code coverage tools or lists specific instructor test cases that are missing from the student's test suite. While useful in some sense, these types of feedback are akin to revealing the solution to the problem, which can inadvertently encourage students to pursue a trial-and-error approach to testing, rather than using a more systematic approach that encourages learning. In addition to not teaching students why their test suite is inadequate, this type of feedback may motivate students to become dependent on the feedback rather than thinking for themselves. To address this deficiency, there is an opportunity to investigate alternative feedback mechanisms that include a positive reinforcement of testing concepts. We argue that using an inquiry-based learning approach is better than simply providing the answers. To facilitate this type of learning, we present Testing Tutor, a web-based assignment submission platform that supports different levels of testing pedagogy via a customizable feedback engine. We evaluated the impact of the different types of feedback through an empirical study in two sophomore-level courses. We use Testing Tutor to provide students with different types of feedback, either traditional detailed code coverage feedback or inquiry-based learning conceptual feedback, and compare the effects. The results show that students that receive conceptual feedback had higher code coverage (by different measures), fewer redundant test cases, and higher programming grades than the students who receive traditional code coverage feedback. CCS CONCEPTS• Software and its engineering → Software creation and management; Software verification and validation;

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Teaching Practices of Software Testing in Programming Education

Scatalon

Garcia

Barbosa

2020

2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)

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Towards the use of an automatic assessment system in the teaching of software testing

Cited by 4 publications

References 16 publications

Evaluation and assessment of effects on exploring mutation testing in programming courses

Evaluation and assessment of effects on exploring mutation testing in programming courses

A Comparison of Inquiry-Based Conceptual Feedback vs. Traditional Detailed Feedback Mechanisms in Software Testing Education: An Empirical Investigation

Teaching Practices of Software Testing in Programming Education

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