On the testing methods used by beginning software testers

Yu, Yuen-Tak; Ng, Sebastian; Poon, Pak-Lok; Chen, Tsong Yueh

doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2003.09.006

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Yu et al (2004) introduced a classification-tree method, or CTM, -a black-box testing method -in an undergraduate course. They concluded that initially white-box testing methods were more popular among students, who were later convinced of the benefits of CTM after they learned and used it.…”

Section: Usage and Benefits Of Different Testing Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Harrison (2010) demonstrated that different techniques are needed for developer and tester testing, and stated that the double-headed testing project is a successful way for students to learn how to apply testing techniques used by both developers and testers. Yu et al (2004) introduced a classification-tree method (CTM)a black-box testing methodin an undergraduate course. They concluded that initially white-box testing methods were more popular among students, who were later convinced of the benefits of CTM after they learned and used it.…”

Section: Testing Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Exploring and expanding students’ success in software testing

Mishra

Ostrovska

Hacaloğlu

2017

ITP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose: Testing is one of the indispensable activities in software development and is being adopted as an independent course by software engineering departments at universities worldwide. In this paper, an investigation of the performance of learners about testing is carried out, given the tendencies in the industry and motivation caused by the unavailability of similar studies in software testing field. Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on the data collected over three years (between 2012 and 2014) from students taking the Software Testing course. The course is included in the second year of undergraduate curriculum for the Bachelor of Engineering (Software Engineering). Findings: It has been observed that, from the performance perspective, automated testing outperforms structural and functional testing techniques, and that a strong correlation exists among these three approaches. Moreover, a strong programming background does help towards further success in structural and automated testing, but has no effect on functional testing. The results of different teaching styles within the course are also presented together with an analysis exploring the relationship between students' gender and success in the software testing course, revealing that there is no difference in terms of performance between male and female students in the course. Moreover, it is advisable to introduce teaching concepts one at a time because students find it difficult to grasp the ideas otherwise. Research Limitations: These findings are based on the analysis conducted using three years of data collected while teaching a course in testing. Obviously, there are some limitations to this study. For example, student's strength in programming is calculated using the score of C programming courses taken in previous year/semester. Such scores may not reflect their current level of programming knowledge. Furthermore, attempt was made to ensure that the exercises given for different testing techniques have similar difficulty level to guarantee that the difference in success between these testing techniques is due to the inherent complexity of the technique itself and not because of different exercises. Still, there is small probability that a certain degree of change in success may be due to the difference in the difficulty levels of the exercises. As such, it is obviously premature to consider the present results as final since there is a lack of similar type of studies, with which the authors can compare their results. Therefore, more work needs to be done in different settings to draw sound conclusions in this respect. Orginality/value: Although there are few studies (see, for example, Chan et al., 2005;Garousi and Zhi, 2013;Ng et al., 2004) exploring the preference of testers over distinct software testing techniques in the industry, there appears to be no paper comparing the preferences and performances of learners in terms of different testing techniques.

show abstract

Section: Usage and Benefits Of Different Testing Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Testing Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring and expanding students’ success in software testing

Mishra

Ostrovska

Hacaloğlu

2017

ITP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Architecture Based Reliability and Testing Estimation for Mobile Applications

Wadhwani

Memon

Hameed

2008

Wireless Networks, Information Processing and Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

On the Learnability of Two Representations of Equivalence Partitioning and Boundary Value Analysis

Murnane

Reed

Hall

2007

2007 Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC'07)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Currently, Equivalence Partitioning and Boundary Value Analysis are taught at La Trobe University using Myers' original representation of these black-box testing methods. We previously proposed an alternative representation called Atomic Rules. In this paper we present the statistical results of two similar experiments that examine which of these approaches enable students to write more complete and correct black-box test sets and which approach students prefer to use. We compare the results of these experiments and discuss how the results could change the teaching of black-box testing methods at La Trobe University and in industry.

show abstract

On the testing methods used by beginning software testers

Cited by 6 publications

References 10 publications

Exploring and expanding students’ success in software testing

Exploring and expanding students’ success in software testing

Architecture Based Reliability and Testing Estimation for Mobile Applications

On the Learnability of Two Representations of Equivalence Partitioning and Boundary Value Analysis

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About