GAMFLEW: A serious game to teach software testing

Abstract

As per the SWEBOK, software testing tackles the verification of software under test, to assure expected behavior or perform fault detection. Its importance is undeniable, but in education, both students and practitioners suffer from difficult-to-address issues, such as motivation and transmitting the importance of software testing practices. Approaching software testing education effectively is paramount to properly educating the practitioners of tomorrow, and various methods, ranging from using open-source projects to gamification, have been attempted. Gamification specifically tackles the motivation of students in an attempt to create fun out of learning software testing concepts. One way to integrate it is through the use of serious games or games developed for purposes beyond entertainment. This work intends to propose and cover the development and implementation of a serious game to teach students concepts related to software testing, specifically white-box testing. A systematic literature review is performed to analyze the current state of software testing education in general, including a review of challenges, methodologies, and reported results, all to inform the development of the new game, GAMFLEW (GAMe For LEarning White-box testing). The need for teacher participation in the learning process, appropriate accessibility and difficulty, and proper knowledge attainment evaluation, among other impacts, are derived from the review. Inception, design, proposal and implementation are covered, explaining game mechanics and approaches made to further the work of previous serious games covering software testing. Development was incremental and was followed by a round of empirical studies with real student participants.