Educational modules and chatterbots to support flipped classroom approaches in teaching software testing

Abstract

In the educational context is discussed about using software to stimulate and facilitate critical thinking of the student and the acquisition of skills and knowledge construction, demystifying the ideology that the student should be a passive agent in its learning. Therefore, approaches as flipped classroom arise as an alternative to decentralizing the role of teacher, centralizing learning in student. In this scenario, teaching Software Testing is becoming quite challenging because, despite of its importance to software quality, the Software Test activity is seen by many students as little motivating. Some alternatives to improve the teaching of Software Test are highlighted, in particular, educational modules and games. However, most studies consider the application of tools as a complement to the traditional teaching model. This situation is the motivation of this research project, where the purpose is the proposition of mechanisms to support a new methodology for teaching software testing, considering Flipped Classroom. The objective is to establish an approach of the flipped classroom for teaching Software Testing composed of structured educational modules integrating to chatterbots. The chatterbots will act as virtual advisors during the study done by the students. An experimental study will be conducted in the scope of software testing disciplines in order to evaluate the proposed approach and to obtain empirical evidences about its practical applicability. (AU)