Gamification to Aid the Learning of Test Coverage Concepts

Gamification to Aid the Learning of Test Coverage Concepts

Gamification to Aid the Learning of Test Coverage Concepts

Eman Sherif; Andy Liu; Brian Nguyen; Sorin Lerner; William G. Griswold

Abstract

"The ability to effectively and efficiently test software is an important practice in software testing that is often under-emphasized in computer science education. Many students find learning about testing to be uninteresting and difficult to learn. This causes numerous students to develop inadequate testing habits, which can be detrimental to their professional careers. To encourage students to develop better testing habits, we used gamification to make the learning experience more engaging and enjoyable. In this paper we explore this idea by integrating gamification and statement coverage into a turn-based game called CoverBot. To test the effectiveness of CoverBot with respect to both teaching statement coverage and increasing engagement and enjoyment, we conducted a user study. We found that gamification makes the learning about statement coverage more engaging and enjoyable while also enhancing the participants performance and understanding of statement coverage."

Reference

Sherif, E., Liu, A., Nguyen, B., Lerner, S., & Griswold, W. G. (2020, November). Gamification to aid the learning of test coverage concepts. In 2020 IEEE 32nd Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9206224

Keywords

Computer-aided instruction, gamification, software testing, statement coverage