An Automated System for Interactively Learning Software Testing

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dc.citation.firstpage98en_US
dc.citation.journalTitleProceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Educationen_US
dc.citation.lastpage103en_US
dc.contributor.authorSmith, Rebeccaen_US
dc.contributor.authorTang, Terryen_US
dc.contributor.authorWarren, Joeen_US
dc.contributor.authorRixner, Scotten_US
dc.date.accessioned2017-08-01T16:30:11Zen_US
dc.date.available2017-08-01T16:30:11Zen_US
dc.date.issued2017en_US
dc.description.abstractTesting is an important, time-consuming, and often difficult part of the software development process. It is therefore critical to introduce testing early in the computer science curriculum, and to provide students with frequent opportunities for practice and feedback. This paper presents an automated system to help introductory students learn how to test software. Students submit test cases to the system, which uses a large corpus of buggy programs to evaluate these test cases. In addition to gauging the quality of the test cases, the system immediately presents students with feedback in the form of buggy programs that nonetheless pass their tests. This enables students to understand why their test cases are deficient and gives them a starting point for improvement. The system has proven effective in an introductory class: students that trained using the system were later able to write better test cases -- even without any feedback -- than those who were not. Further, students reported additional benefits such as improved ability to read code written by others and to understand multiple approaches to the same problem.en_US
dc.identifier.citationSmith, Rebecca, Tang, Terry, Warren, Joe, et al.. "An Automated System for Interactively Learning Software Testing." <i>Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education,</i> (2017) Association for Computing Machinery: 98-103. https://doi.org/10.1145/3059009.3059022.en_US
dc.identifier.digitalfinal_paper_ITiCSE17en_US
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1145/3059009.3059022en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/96015en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherAssociation for Computing Machineryen_US
dc.rightsArticle is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.en_US
dc.titleAn Automated System for Interactively Learning Software Testingen_US
dc.typeJournal articleen_US
dc.type.dcmiTexten_US
dc.type.publicationpublisher versionen_US
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