On Applying Gamification to Teach Software Testing Criteria.
Gamification, Graph Coverage Criteria; Software Engineering Education
A key challenge in education is devising novel strategies to motivate and engage students throughout the learning process. Gamification has been used extensively in variety of settings to support the learning process and keep students engaged. Essentially, gamification is centered on employing game-based mechanics and gamelike features to non-game problems. Recently, researchers have started looking into how gamification can be explored to improve the performance of students while trying to master challenging topics. We set out to evaluate the extent to which gamification can be a helpful in teaching graph-based software testing criteria. To this end, we designed and implemented Gamifying Graph Coverage Criteria (GGCC), which is a tool that presents instructional information on graph-based criteria in a gamified fashion. We also carried out an experiment involving 20 participants to examine the effectiveness of gamification in the context of teaching graph-based software testing criteria. We found that participants exposed to the content through GGCC and its gamelike quizzes performed better than participants exposed to the content using traditional classroom and pen-and-paper-based exams. A later survey confirmed this positive attitude from the participants towards GGCC.