Designing Early Testing Course Curricula with Activities Matching the V-Model Phases

EasyChair Preprint 6934

Abstract

This work addresses the gap between software engineering process terminology in formal education, and the practical skills relevant to testing related work. The Vmodel is a commonly referenced description of how the software engineering processes are tied to the different software testing levels. It is used in software engineering education to illustrate which type of testing work should be carried out during a certain development stage. However, the V-model is mainly conceptual and tied to the steps in the Waterfall model, leaving the students with little knowledge about what is actually done. To solve this problem, we propose an approach to map the V-Model development phases and testing levels with corresponding, actual testing techniques. We then evaluate the approach by designing the weekly topics, learning goals and testing activities for a 7 week introductory course on the basics software testing and quality assurance. Based on the course outcomes and recent literature, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed curriculum.

Keyphrases: curriculum, software engineering education, software testing

@booklet{EasyChair:6934,
  author    = {Timo Hynninen and Antti Knutas and Jussi Kasurinen},
  title     = {Designing Early Testing Course Curricula with Activities Matching the V-Model Phases},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6934},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}