Testing Maze: um jogo educativo para o ensino de testes funcionais

Abstract

Software testing is a fundamental process for increasing the reliability of a software. However, teaching software testing with traditional theoretical classes can be discouraging due to the lack of dynamism and practical activities. To solve this problem, classroom methodologies that encourage active student participation can be used. Therefore, from this perspective, approaches involving educational games are increasingly used in undergraduate courses to engage students and facilitate learning. Functional testing is a type of software testing based on the functional requirements of the system, so that a particular functionality is tested without the need to access the source code. In this context, this work proposes the Testing Maze, an educational puzzle game for teaching functional testing concepts and test specifications containing a fantastical narrative. The game was applied with 31 undergraduate students from the Federal University of Ceará in the Software Verification, Validation, and Testing discipline. The validation process of the game took place in two stages over two semesters involving 3 different classes. In each stage, a different version of the game was applied, in the first, a prototype was applied with 14 students, and in the second stage, a second version of the game containing improvements was applied with 17 students divided into two classes. At the end of each activity, the students answered an online questionnaire to evaluate the Testing Maze. At the end of the validation, all the questions in the questionnaire received a majority of favorable responses to the game. Regarding the second version, 14 students considered that the Testing Maze helped in understanding the concept of functional testing, representing an approval rate of 82.3% for this version.