A Strategy to Combine Test-Driven Development and Test Criteria to Improve Learning of Programming Skills

Abstract

Students usually have difficulties assimilating basic contents of introductory programming disciplines. Test-Driven Development (TDD) is an interesting approach to address this issue, but it does not focus on quality with respect to software testing. This study aims to verify the effectiveness of the use of software testing criteria for producing test cases with higher quality in the context of education with TDD. We used the test-driven development technique with a change in the refactoring step, adding an activity for creating test cases using software testing criteria. We performed two experimental studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the technique. Each study comprised two groups: one using traditional TDD and the other using TDD with test criteria, both having developed the same software. The results showed that groups applying the proposed intervention produced better test cases, with greater coverage, and not disrupting TDD. Moreover, we could observe that, in general, the test set for groups using TDD with criteria was more efficient, getting greater coverage with fewer test cases than groups using plain TDD.