From Blackboard to the Office: A Look Into How Practitioners Perceive Software Testing Education

TL;DR

This study surveys newly graduated practitioners to evaluate how well undergraduate software testing education aligns with industry expectations, revealing gaps in knowledge and suggesting areas for curriculum improvement.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into practitioners' perceptions of software testing education and highlights the disconnect between academic training and industry needs.

Findings

Practitioners learned similar to experienced professionals.

Less than half of the testing topics are covered in undergraduate courses.

Extracurricular industry-backed courses are common among graduates.

Abstract

The teaching-learning process may require specific pedagogical approaches to establish a relationship with industry practices. Recently, some studies investigated the educators' perspectives and the undergraduate courses curriculum to identify potential weaknesses and solutions for the software testing teaching process. However, it is still unclear how the practitioners evaluate the acquisition of knowledge about software testing in undergraduate courses. This study carried out an expert survey with 68 newly graduated practitioners to determine what the industry expects from them and what they learned in academia. The yielded results indicated that those practitioners learned at a similar rate as others with a long industry experience. Also, they studied less than half of the 35 software testing topics collected in the survey and took industry-backed extracurricular courses to complement their learning. Additionally, our findings point out a set of implications for future research, as the respondents' learning difficulties (e.g., lack of learning sources) and the gap between academic education and industry expectations (e.g., certifications).