A diagnosis on software testing education in the Brazilian Universities

Abstract

This Research to Practice Full Paper presents an investigation on the teaching of software tests in Computer Science courses in Brazilian Institutions. In this work, we investigate the existence of subjects and contents related to the software testing theme in the academic curricula of the best Brazilian universities in the computer courses indicated by Folha's Universities Ranking in 2019. So that the software testing activity becomes widespread and recognizable, it needs to be widely taught and discussed, although there is a growing concern with this teaching theme, the organization and depth of teaching software testing varies widely in each curriculum matrix of the studied institutions, especially comparing them with the curriculum of updated reference of the ACM / IEEE (Association for Computing Machinery / Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) and the curriculum guide of the SBC (Brazilian Computer Society) along with the areas of knowledge present in the SWEBOK Guide (Software Engineering Body of Knowledge), which are the main references for building of the curricula of Brazilian institutions. Thus, this work provides important inferences about how software testing has been approached, at the curricular level, in different Brazilian institutions, from specific subjetcs of software testing, subjects that contain topics related to tests and which are the main topics that are taught. Professors and academic managers can use the knowledge generated in this paper to help in a possible readjustment of how their institutions can deal with the teaching of software tests.