An “objects first, tests second” approach for software engineering education

Since unit testing is a skill required of professional software developers, lecturers have to develop this skill in their software engineering students. Therefore, we introduce the approach of “objects first, tests second”, which incorporates unit testing into introductory programming classes. We discuss requirements that teaching materials must meet to effectively support this approach, and present a concept for assessing the quality of student written tests. An analysis of students' results illustrates the effectiveness of this teaching approach.