Integrating Testing into Software Engineering Courses Supported by a Collaborative Learning Environment

As software becomes more ubiquitous and complex, the cost of software bugs continues to grow at a staggering rate. To remedy this situation, there needs to be major improvement in the knowledge and application of software validation techniques. Although there are several software validation techniques, software testing continues to be one of the most widely used in industry. The high demand for software engineers in the next decade has resulted in more software engineering (SE) courses being offered in academic institutions. However, due to the number of topics to be covered in SE courses, little or no attention is given to software testing, resulting in students entering industry with little or no testing experience. We propose a minimally disruptive approach of integrating software testing into SE courses by providing students access to a collaborative learning environment containing learning materials on testing techniques and testing tools. In this article, we describe the learning environment and the studies conducted to measure the benefits accrued by students using the learning environment in the SE courses.