Using Active Methodologies for Teaching and Learning of Exploratory Test Design and Execution

Abstract

Background: Exploratory testing has been used in the industry mainly to meet the needs of agile testing processes. In an agile scenario, this testing approach is important to facilitate changes constantly, which helps agile projects successfully. One of the ways to achieve success more easily is if the test process follows guides that provide structured activities. Problem Analysis: In this context, some studies have identified that software engineering does not understand how to apply exploratory testing approaches in a systematic way, involving both design and execution activities. After a review of the literature, it has been noticed that professionals performing exploratory testing focus only on execution activities. In an academic scenario, the literature review has evidenced that content about exploratory testing is not usually taught, and it is important that the professional acquires enough basic skills to apply it through structured activities. Purpose: In this context, this article presents an analysis and discussion of the results obtained in an experiment that applied a syllabus proposed by the author, using active methodologies to teach the Exploratory Test Design and Execution being applied and testing the approach in a systematic way. The teaching plan elaborated upon and used as part of the syllabus is based on “learning by doing” in an interactive way, that is, providing student-centered teaching in order to make such an approach more beneficial to the student and, conditioning them to obtain the expected competences in the industry. Methods: The strategies to carry out the research were as follows: (i) a review of the literature to identify gaps in the knowledge about activities performed in the exploratory testing process; then, to elaborate upon the syllabus proposed, (ii) equivalence mapping was carried out on some guides and curricula related to the research theme; (iii) a survey was conducted to identify the tools, techniques, and work products usually used by professionals in the industry; (iv) a teaching plan, based on active methodologies, was produced using the proposed syllabus; (v) then, for the application of this teaching plan in an experiment, a statistical analysis was performed using the two-tailed Student-t approach for independent samples. Results: For this, both groups (experiment and control) were analyzed using the two-tailed Student-t technique, and we noticed that significant statistical gains were reached with the use of the proposed approach, compared to the control group. All participants reported that some basic test concepts, if adopted in their courses, could contribute positively. The participation made them (students) more active in the classes provided by active pedagogical practices, especially when remote teaching was applied; this broke down barriers to communication with their classmates. Conclusion: The results show that the use of active methodologies can provide benefits to the learning of Exploratory Test Design and Execution systems as they allow the application of tools in line with real scenarios observed in software development companies; these results also encourage new studies to explore these ideas further.