Development and Validation of Feedback-Based Testing Tutor Tool to Support Software Testing Pedagogy

• Main Author: Cordova, Lucas Pascual
• Format: Others
• Published: North Dakota State University 2021
• Subjects: pedagogy; software engineering; testing
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10365/31749

Current testing education tools provide coverage deficiency feedback that either mimics industry code coverage tools or enumerates through the associated instructor tests that were absent from the student’s test suite. While useful, these types of feedback mechanisms are akin to revealing the solution and can inadvertently lead a student down a trial-and-error path, rather than using a systematic approach. In addition to an inferior learning experience, a student may become dependent on the presence of this feedback in the future. Considering these drawbacks, there exists an opportunity to develop and investigate alternative feedback mechanisms that promote positive reinforcement of testing concepts. We believe that using an inquiry-based learning approach is a better alternative (to simply providing the answers) where students can construct and reconstruct their knowledge through discovery and guided learning techniques. To facilitate this, we present Testing Tutor, a web-based assignment submission platform to support different levels of testing pedagogy via a customizable feedback engine. This dissertation is based on the experiences of using Testing Tutor at different levels of the curriculum. The results indicate that the groups using conceptual feedback produced higher-quality test suites (achieved higher average code coverage, fewer redundant tests, and higher rates of improvement) than the groups that received traditional code coverage feedback. Furthermore, students also produced higher quality test suites when the conceptual feedback was tailored to task-level for lower division student groups and self-regulating-level for upper division student groups. We plan to perform additional studies with the following objectives: 1) improve the feedback mechanisms; 2) understand the effectiveness of Testing Tutor’s feedback mechanisms at different levels of the curriculum; and 3) understand how Testing Tutor can be used as a tool for instructors to gauge learning and determine whether intervention is necessary to improve students’ learning.