LIGHTVIEWS - visual interactive Internet environment for learning OO software testing

Abstract

The Internet has been recognised not only as a tool for communication in the 21st century but also as an environment for enabling changes in the paradignm of teaching and learning. This paper describes our development effort, sponsored by the Committee of University Teaching Development (CUTSD98) Grant, in designing educational material on Object-Oriented (O-O) testing in an Internet environment. The aim of this work is to enhance the state of the art in learning O-O testing by visualizing the testing process and interactive courseware in virtual communities. We have endeavoured to create an effective Internet-based courseware known as LIGHTVIEWS which contains O-O testing case studies described by visual images, animation, and interactive lessons, to assist active participation by learners to result in better understanding and knowledge retention. Our approach employs appropriate UML diagrams, makes the diagrams test ready by including details of constraints as part of state/event transitions, and provides interactive lessons for learning O-O software testing. We have used four case studies to explore the various test selection techniques. We have included black-box testing at unit level in case study 1, and at the system level in case study 3. The case study 2 has been used to illustrate event based testing by visually representing the dynamics of Java applets at work, and using interactivity to learn how to test Java applets, threads, and applet communication. The case study 4 explores the various aspects of distributed components testing.