Towards a Conversational Agent to Support the Software Testing Education
Resumo
The training of professionals in the field of software testing is increasing its relevance in the past few years and, therefore, efforts in appropriate methodologies for the learning-teaching process in this context have been proposed and appreciated. The emergence of pedagogical models, such as flipped classroom and team-based learning, which demand from the students a previous study of the theory before the lecture, creates a concern: how to support the before class learning? Because of the hybrid nature of these pedagogical models, which means they mix elements from traditional and distance education, it is possible that the support mechanisms used in distance learning platforms, such as conversational agents, can be applied for this matter. At the same time in which the academic work tries carefully to provide a proper software testing formation, there are also many contributions being established regarding the training and non-formal learning. Improvement and personal training courses about criteria, tools, and software testing good practices are being created by teaching institutes and offered in Massive Open Online Courses platforms (MOOCs). However, in this type of course, in the absence of a teacher, the student might be in a situation where there is nobody available to answer their questions about the topic. In this paper, we propose the use of conversational agents in solving the problems and challenges which encompass the learning through MOOCs and hybrid models. A conversational agent, called TOB-SST is proposed to support software testing education. A viability study was conducted to understand the quality of the given answers by TOB-SST and the possibility of it serving as a learning support tool. The results indicate that it is promising to employ a conversational agent to guide student study.
Referências
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G. J. Myers, C. Sandler e T. Badgett. 2011. The Art of Software Testing. Wiley Publishing, Hoboken, Nova Jersey, EUA.
L. N. Paschoal, M. M. de Oliveira e P. M. M. Chicon. 2018. A chatterbot sensitive to student's context to help on software engineering education. Em XLIV Conferencia Latinoamericana de Informática, 1--10.
L. N. Paschoal, L. R. Silva e S. R. S. Souza. 2017. Abordagem flipped classroom em comparação com o modelo tradicional de ensino: uma investigação empírica no âmbito de teste de software. Em XXVIII Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, 476--485.
L. N. Paschoal e S. R. S. Souza. 2018. A survey on software testing education in brazil. Em 17th Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality. ACM, 334--343.
L. N. Paschoal e S. R. S. Souza. 2018. Como ensinar teste de software com flipped classroom? Em VIII Workshop on Thesis and Dissertations of CBSoft - IX Brazilian Conference on Software: Theory and Practice, 46--52.
L. N. Paschoal e S. R. S. Souza. 2018. Planejamento e aplicação de flipped classroom para o ensino de teste de software. RENOTE - Revista Novas Tecnologias na Educação, 16, 2, 1--10.
L. Rodríguez-Gil, J. García-Zubia, P. Orduña, A. Villar-Martinez e D. López-De-Ipiña. 2019. New approach for conversational agent definition by non-programmers: a visual domain-specific language. IEEE Access, 7, 5262--5276.
L. P. Scatalon, M. L. Fioravanti, J. M. Prates, R. E. Garcia e E. F. Barbosa. 2018. A survey on graduates' curriculum-based knowledge gaps in software testing. Em IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, 1--8.
S. Schlögl, G. Doherty e S. Luz. 2015. Wizard of oz experimentation for language technology applications: challenges and tools. Interacting with Computers, 27, 6, 592--615.
F.J. Shull e V. R. Basili. 1998. Developing techniques for using software documents: a series of empirical studies. Tese de doutorado. research directed by Dept. of Computer Science.University of Maryland...
F. Shull, J. Carver e G. H. Travassos. 2001. An empirical methodology for introducing software processes. Em 8th European Software Engineering Conference Held Jointly with 9th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering. Vienna, Austria, 288--296.
A. Soska, J. Mottok e C. Wolff. 2016. An experimental card game for software testing: development, design and evaluation of a physical card game to deepen the knowledge of students in academic software testing education. Em 7th IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, 576--584.
P. H.D. Valle, E. F. Barbosa e J. C. Maldonado. 2015. Cs curricula of the most relevant universities in brazil and abroad: perspective of software testing education. Em XVII International Symposium on Computers in Education. Setubal, Portugal, 62--68.
P.H.D. Valle, E.F. Barbosa e J.C. Maldonado. 2015. Um mapeamento sistemático sobre ensino de teste de software. Em XXVI Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, 71--80.
R. Epstein, G. Roberts e G. Beber, editores. 2009. The anatomy of a.l.i.c.e. Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 181--210.
B. AbuShawar e E. Atwell. 2016. Usefulness, localizability, humanness, and language-benefit: additional evaluation criteria for natural language dialogue systems. International Journal of Speech Technology, 19, 2, 373--383.
C. C. Aguirre, C. D. Kloos, C. Alario-Hoyos e P. J. Muñoz-Merino. 2018. Supporting a mooc through a conversational agent. design of a first prototype. Em International Symposium on Computers in Education, 1--6.
E. F. Barbosa, E. Y. Nakagawa e J. C. Maldonado. 2006. Towards the establishment of an ontology of software testing. Em 18th International Conference on Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering. San Francisco, USA.
F. Barros e P. Tedesco. 2016. Agentes inteligentes conversacionais: conceitos básicos e desenvolvimento. Em 35a Jornada de Atualização em Informática -CSBC. Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil.
L. Benotti, M. C. Martnez e F. Schapachnik. 2018. A tool for introducing computer science with automatic formative assessment. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 11, 2, 179--192.
A. Bertolino. 2007. Software testing research: achievements, challenges, dreams. Em Future of Software Engineering, 85--103.
A. C. Dias-Neto, S. Matalonga, M. Solari, G. Robiolo e G. H. Travassos. 2017. Toward the characterization of software testing practices in south america: looking at brazil and uruguay. Software Quality Journal, 25, 4, 1145--1183.
A. G. O. Fassbinder, M. Fassbinder, E. F. Barbosa e G. D. Magoulas. 2017. Massive open online courses in software engineering education. Em IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, 1--9.
G. Fraser, A. Gambi, M. Kreis e J. M. Rojas. 2019. Gamifying a software testing course with code defenders. Em 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. ACM, 571--577.
Z. Guo e T. Inoue. 2019. Using a conversational agent to facilitate non-native speaker's active participation in conversation. Em Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, LBW1216:1-LBW1216:6.
F. Herpich, F. B. Nunes, G. B. Voss e R. D. Medina. 2016. Three-dimensional virtual environment and npc: a perspective about intelligent agents ubiquitous. Em IGI Global, Hershey, EUA, 510--536.
A. Kerry, R. Ellis e S. Bull. 2009. Conversational agents in e-learning. Em Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XVI. T. Allen, R. Ellis e M. Petridis, editores. Springer London, London, 169--182.
P. Lauvås e A. Arcuri. 2018. Recent trends in software testing education: a systematic literature review. Em The Norwegian Conference on Didactics in IT education, 1--11.
O. A. L. Lemos, F. F. Silveira, F C. Ferrari e A. Garcia. 2018. The impact of software testing education on code reliability: an empirical assessment. Journal of Systems and Software, 137, 1, 497--511.
M. D. Leonhardt, L. Tarouco, R. M. Vicari, E. R. Santos e M. S. da Silva. 2007. Using chatbots for network management training through problem-based oriented education. Em 7th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies. Niigata, Japan, 845--847.
F. A. Mikic-Fonte, M. Llamas-Nistal e M. Caeiro-Rodríguez. 2018. Using a chatterbot as a faq assistant in a course about computers architecture. Em IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, 1--4.
A. Mittal, L. Vigentini, M. Djatmiko, G. Prusty, Y. Sharma e M. E. King. 2018. Mooc-o-bot: using cognitive technologies to extend knowledge support in moocs. Em IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering, 69--76.
J. L. Z. Montenegro, C. A. Costa e R. R. Righi. 2019. Survey of conversational agents in health. Expert Systems with Applications, 129, 56--67.
G. J. Myers, C. Sandler e T. Badgett. 2011. The Art of Software Testing. Wiley Publishing, Hoboken, Nova Jersey, EUA.
L. N. Paschoal, M. M. de Oliveira e P. M. M. Chicon. 2018. A chatterbot sensitive to student's context to help on software engineering education. Em XLIV Conferencia Latinoamericana de Informática, 1--10.
L. N. Paschoal, L. R. Silva e S. R. S. Souza. 2017. Abordagem flipped classroom em comparação com o modelo tradicional de ensino: uma investigação empírica no âmbito de teste de software. Em XXVIII Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, 476--485.
L. N. Paschoal e S. R. S. Souza. 2018. A survey on software testing education in brazil. Em 17th Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality. ACM, 334--343.
L. N. Paschoal e S. R. S. Souza. 2018. Como ensinar teste de software com flipped classroom? Em VIII Workshop on Thesis and Dissertations of CBSoft - IX Brazilian Conference on Software: Theory and Practice, 46--52.
L. N. Paschoal e S. R. S. Souza. 2018. Planejamento e aplicação de flipped classroom para o ensino de teste de software. RENOTE - Revista Novas Tecnologias na Educação, 16, 2, 1--10.
L. Rodríguez-Gil, J. García-Zubia, P. Orduña, A. Villar-Martinez e D. López-De-Ipiña. 2019. New approach for conversational agent definition by non-programmers: a visual domain-specific language. IEEE Access, 7, 5262--5276.
L. P. Scatalon, M. L. Fioravanti, J. M. Prates, R. E. Garcia e E. F. Barbosa. 2018. A survey on graduates' curriculum-based knowledge gaps in software testing. Em IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, 1--8.
S. Schlögl, G. Doherty e S. Luz. 2015. Wizard of oz experimentation for language technology applications: challenges and tools. Interacting with Computers, 27, 6, 592--615.
F.J. Shull e V. R. Basili. 1998. Developing techniques for using software documents: a series of empirical studies. Tese de doutorado. research directed by Dept. of Computer Science.University of Maryland...
F. Shull, J. Carver e G. H. Travassos. 2001. An empirical methodology for introducing software processes. Em 8th European Software Engineering Conference Held Jointly with 9th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering. Vienna, Austria, 288--296.
A. Soska, J. Mottok e C. Wolff. 2016. An experimental card game for software testing: development, design and evaluation of a physical card game to deepen the knowledge of students in academic software testing education. Em 7th IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, 576--584.
P. H.D. Valle, E. F. Barbosa e J. C. Maldonado. 2015. Cs curricula of the most relevant universities in brazil and abroad: perspective of software testing education. Em XVII International Symposium on Computers in Education. Setubal, Portugal, 62--68.
P.H.D. Valle, E.F. Barbosa e J.C. Maldonado. 2015. Um mapeamento sistemático sobre ensino de teste de software. Em XXVI Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, 71--80.
R. Epstein, G. Roberts e G. Beber, editores. 2009. The anatomy of a.l.i.c.e. Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 181--210.
Publicado
21/01/2020
Como Citar
PASCHOAL, Leo Natan; TURCI, Lucas Fernandes; CONTE, Tayana; SOUZA, Simone R. S..
Towards a Conversational Agent to Support the Software Testing Education. In: EDUCATION - SIMPÓSIO BRASILEIRO DE ENGENHARIA DE SOFTWARE (SBES), 33. , 2019, Salvador.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2020
.
