Unit Testing Challenges with Automated Marking

TL;DR

This paper presents online unit testing challenges with automated marking as an effective educational tool to improve student engagement, understanding, and feedback speed in software testing education.

Contribution

It introduces a novel online platform with automated marking for unit testing challenges and evaluates its positive impact on student learning and motivation.

Findings

Increased student engagement and motivation.

Enhanced understanding of testing concepts.

Faster feedback compared to manual grading.

Abstract

Teaching software testing presents difficulties due to its abstract and conceptual nature. The lack of tangible outcomes and limited emphasis on hands-on experience further compound the challenge, often leading to difficulties in comprehension for students. This can result in waning engagement and diminishing motivation over time. In this paper, we introduce online unit testing challenges with automated marking as a learning tool via the EdStem platform to enhance students' software testing skills and understanding of software testing concepts. Then, we conducted a survey to investigate the impact of the unit testing challenges with automated marking on student learning. The results from 92 participants showed that our unit testing challenges have kept students more engaged and motivated, fostering deeper understanding and learning, while the automated marking mechanism enhanced students' learning progress, helping them to understand their mistakes and misconceptions quicker than traditional-style human-written manual feedback. Consequently, these results inform educators that the online unit testing challenges with automated marking improve overall student learning experience, and are an effective pedagogical practice in software testing.