An environment for training computer science students on software testing

Software testing is essential to ensure software quality. On most software projects testing activities consume at least 30 percent of the project effort. On safety critical applications, software testing can consume between 50 to 80 percent of project effort. There is a vast amount of information available on software testing techniques and tools and some universities offer software testing courses at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level. Software testing must also be stressed in beginning courses and even in the high schools when students are first learning to program. It is also important in these early years to instill a respect for software testing and some interest in possible testing careers. This paper describes a project to develop a learning and training environment that enables students to develop the knowledge and skills to perform requirement based testing. The target audience for the environment are beginning programming students at either the high school or university level. The software training environment consists of Web-based instructional materials as well as a testing simulator which enables students to actually test software programs. This paper describes the educational objectives of the test training environment, its implementation and results from utilizing the environment with beginning programming students.