Avaliação do efeito da integração de atividades de programação no ensino de teste de software em um ambiente com elementos de jogos

Abstract

Context: Software testing learning is difficult for students due to lack of up-to-date material and a negative attitude towards learning. A plausible solution for encouraging students is to employ gamification techniques. There are tools that combine gamification and teaching, among them Code Defenders, which addresses gamification intertwined with intuitive gameplay that allows players to produce mutants and develop test cases. Objective: The objective was to evaluate the effect of the integration of programming activities in the teaching of software testing in an environment with game elements, as provided by Code Defenders, evaluating the quality of the tool and evaluating the program code and unit tests created by the students. Two research questions were addressed. The first research question investigated if the quality of the environment for teaching software testing integrated into programming is satisfactory. The second research question was about evaluating whether the integration of programming activities when teaching software testing in an environment with game elements allows for better learning of software testing. Methods: The first step was to choose the platform to answer the research questions, which is how Code Defenders was defined. Two modifications were implemented in the platform to improve gamification. Using the modified platform, we proposed to the Computer Science students who participated in the Software Engineering class to carry out a case study to implement program code and unit tests in Java. Finally, they answered a questionnaire to evaluate Code Defenders based on the MEEGA+ method. Their respective program code was evaluated using reference unit tests, and their test cases were evaluated using software test coverage measures. Results: For the first research question, which refers to the quality of Code Defender for teaching software testing integrated into programming, it was evaluated as good, with the game being frequently considered relevant to the students’ interests. In the second survey question, which considered program code and unit test submissions, most students successfully implemented the specified programs and achieved good coverage with their tests. Conclusions: In this work, a study was carried out with students using Code Defenders. For this study, it was possible to observe that the tool presented itself as an alternative to improve the learning of unit tests and programming in Java.