An Open Modern Software Testing Laboratory Courseware – An Experience Report

Abstract

In order to effectively teach software testing students how to test real-world software, the software tools, exercises, and lab projects chosen by testing educators should be practical and realistic. However, there are not many publicly-available realistic testing courseware for software testing educators to adapt and customize. Even for the existing testing lab exercises developed and/or used by the educators, there are various drawbacks, e.g.: (1) They are not usually kept up-to-date with the most recent testing tools and technologies, e.g., JUnit, (2) They are not built based on realistic/real-world Systems Under Test (SUTs), but rather use “toy” examples (SUTs). The above needs were the main motives for the author and his team at the University of Calgary to modernize the lab exercises of an undergraduate software testing course. This paper presents the designed lab courseware, and the experiences learned from using the courseware in the University of Calgary. It is hoped (and expected) that other software testing educators start to use this laboratory courseware and find it useful for their instruction and training needs.