9th WORKSHOP ON TEACHING SOFTWARE TESTING, Jan 29-31, Melbourne FL

9th WORKSHOP ON TEACHING SOFTWARE TESTING (WTST 2010) JANUARY 29 - 31, 2010 MELBOURNE, FLORIDA At the HARRIS INSTITUTE FOR ASSURED INFORMATION CENTER FOR SOFTWARE TESTING EDUCATION & RESEARCH ADVISORY BOARD MEETING, JANUARY 28, 2010 The Workshop on Teaching Software Testing is concerned with the practical aspects of teaching university-caliber software testing courses to academic or commercial students. This year, we are particularly interested in teaching test-driven programming or other approaches to implementation-level testing. We invite participation by: . academics who have experience teaching testing courses or programming courses with significant testing components . practitioners who teach professional seminars on software testing . academic or practitioner instructors with significant online teaching experience and wisdom . one or two graduate students . a few seasoned teachers or testers who are beginning to build their strengths in teaching software testing. There is no fee to attend this meeting. You pay for your seat through the value of your participation. Participation in the workshop is by invitation based on a proposal. We expect to accept 15 participants with an absolute upper bound of 25. WTST is a workshop, not a typical conference. Our presentations serve to drive discussion. The target readers of workshop papers are the other participants, not archival readers. We are glad to start from already-published papers, if they are presented by the author and they would serve as a strong focus for valuable discussion. In a typical presentation, the presenter speaks 10 to 90 minutes, followed by discussion. There is no fixed time for discussion. Past sessions' discussions have run from 1 minute to 4 hours. During the discussion, a participant might ask the presenter simple or detailed questions, describe consistent or contrary experiences or data, present a different approach to the same problem, or (respectfully and collegially) argue with the presenter. In 20 hours of formal sessions, we expect to cover six to eight presentations. We also have lightning presentations, time-limited to 5 minutes (plus discussion). These are fun and they often stimulate extended discussions over lunch and at night. Presenters must provide materials that they share with the workshop under a Creative Commons license, allowing reuse by other teachers. Such materials will be posted at http://www.wtst.org . BACKGROUND AND SUGGESTED TOPICS Our focus is on implementation-level testing. We are interested in the types of tests that programmers write to understand and assess their own code. These include unit tests and lower-level integration tests. Presentations on "acceptance-test driven development" are out of scope of this meeting. We were excited by the rise of interest in implementation-level testing that came with the agile development movement. Unfortunately, test-driven development seems to have been lightly adopted by the agile development community; even less formal approaches to unit testing appear to be minority practices ( see for example, http://www.agilealliance.org/show/1546, http://www.techworld.com.au/article/256619/unit_testing_doomed, and http://agile.dzone.com/videos/scott-ambler-agile-2009). Our impression is that unit testing has been gradually becoming less visible and less central in the agile community. Practitioners believe it is hard to do this well (http://www.ambysoft.com/surveys/practices2009.html) and we've been finding that it is hard to teach it well. Perhaps part of the problem is that the books that introduced unit testing to new and relatively junior programmers are out of date. The newer books and online articles that we've seen are written for more experienced programmers. Most writing that we've seen focuses on test implementation (such as how to use the tools, how to create maintainable test suites, how to test private variables, etc.) rather than on what tests to run and why to run them. We haven't seen much that is suitable for university courses that would be appropriate for average students or for commercial introductions to the practice of TDD. So, what can we use, or what can we develop for use in our courses? Here are *examples* of ideas that might be interesting to the participants at WTST: . Course design: We're looking for experience reports, not theory. We're interested in your report if you have made a significant effort at teaching implementation-level testing and have insight into your successes, failures and challenges. . Online course design: There are a lot of programming courses online. Are any of them good? Can we adapt their instructional methods to create online courses that emphasize implementation-level testing? (Not many universities will teach such courses-some good online courses can create learning opportunities for a broader pool of university students and commercial students.) . Instructive examples: Do you have particularly successful activities or assignments? What are their details? What do students learn? How do you know? What problems do students have in attempting these and how do you recommend that we deal with them (if we reuse your activity)? . Resources for implementation-level test-related activities and assignments: we have all heard of MERLOT and NSDL and several other repositories of learning objects. Have you found any good resources for software testing in any of these repositories? What have you found? How did you search? Can you give a demo, including your search strategy? . Assessment: What techniques should we use to determine whether our assignments and activities are working? Have you used these assessment techniques? Can you give examples? . Qualitative assessment methods: From sloppy anecdotal reports to rigorous qualitative design. How can we use qualitative methods to conduct research on the teaching of computing, including software testing? . Differences in characteristics of learners that predict differences in effectiveness of activities or assignments TO ATTEND AS A PRESENTER Please send a proposal BY DECEMBER 15, 2009 to Cem Kaner that identifies who you are, what your background is, what you would like to present, how long the presentation will take, any special equipment needs, and what written materials you will provide. Along with traditional presentations, we will gladly consider proposed activities and interactive demonstrations. We will begin reviewing proposals on December 1. We encourage early submissions. It is unlikely but possible that we will have accepted a full set of presentation proposals by December 15. Proposals should be between two and four pages long, in PDF format. We will post accepted proposals to http://www.wtst.org . We review proposals in terms of their contribution to knowledge of HOW TO TEACH software testing. Proposals that present a purely theoretical advance in software testing, with weak ties to teaching and application, will not be accepted. Presentations that reiterate materials you have presented elsewhere might be welcome, but it is imperative that you identify the publication history of such work. By submitting your proposal, you agree that, if we accept your proposal, you will submit a scholarly paper for discussion at the workshop by January 15, 2010. Workshop papers may be of any length and follow any standard scholarly style. We will post these at http://www.wtst.org as they are received, for workshop participants to review before the workshop. TO ATTEND AS A NON-PRESENTING PARTICIPANT: Please send a message by DECEMBER 15, 2008, to Cem Kaner that describes your background and interest in teaching software testing. What skills or knowledge do you bring to the meeting that would be of interest to the other participants? ADVISORY BOARD MEETING Florida Tech's Center for Software Testing Education & Research has been developing a collection of hybrid and online course materials for teaching black box software testing . We have NSF funding to adapt these materials for implementation by a broader audience. We have formed an Advisory Board to guide this adaptation and the associated research on the effectiveness of the materials in diverse contexts. We are interested in having a few new members. The Board will meet before WTST, on January 28, 2010. This year's meeting will focus on supporting/creating research collaborations by members of the Board. Our primary interest lies in expanding the community doing research/development on software testing education. . The Center is interested in being involved in new proposals, but we want to foster good ideas at this meeting whether they involve the Center or not. . The Center is interested in encouraging adoption, evaluation and improvement of the course materials that we've developed, but again, we are primarily interested in fostering good ideas at this meeting, not in promoting any particular set of ideas or materials. . The Center's work has primarily focused on system-level black box testing. The Advisory Board meeting is open to system-level ideas as well as implementation-level. If you are interested attending as a Board Member: . If you are not already a member of the Board, please read this invitation and submit an application. . If you are already a member and are willing to come on January 28, please let us know ASAP. . In either case, please let us know whether you plan to stay for WTST. Most of our NSF funding has been exhausted. We have some additional money for this from donations. However at this point, we can only afford to cover hotel costs of advisory board members who attend the meeting and WTST. We cannot reimburse airfare. We'll discuss this in more detail in correspondence with the Advisory Board. Acknowledgements Support for this meeting comes from the National Science Foundation, the Association for Software Testing and the Harris Institute for Assured Information at the Florida Institute of Technology. The hosts of the meeting are: . Scott Barber (http://www.perftestplus.com) . Rebecca Fiedler (http://www.beckyfiedler.com) . Cem Kaner (http://www.kaner.com and http://www.testingeducation.org) Cem Kaner, J.D., Ph.D. Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology www.kaner.com www.testingeducation.org http://www.satisfice.com/kaner/