approach. The application of ET in this present work
focuses on the achievement of functional testing,
specifically, on the online test and simulation system
- SAW (Alcantara, 2018). The achievement of
functional testing becomes quite adequate in the
application of ET, because according to the SLM
performed previously, it was evidenced that the ET
allows finding, mainly, the defects of graphical user
interface (GUI) and usability.
2 RELATED WORKS
Initially, a research was carried out in the specialized
literature, in relation to published articles, to identify
the papers that present a similar proposal to this
present study. The research focused on work using the
gamification approach as supporting teaching and
learning of ET, however, no work was found, so the
related work described in this section covers teaching
of testing in general. This highlights the importance,
relevance and originality of this study.
Herbert (2016) presents four standards to the
teaching of testing for non-software developers.
These standards were extracted from the experiments
in the testing course for graduate students of the
Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre
(UFCSPA), in this context, the functional testing
approach and risk-based strategy were the most
feasible to apply, given that individuals had extensive
knowledge of the domain and context of the system
under test (SUT). However, the author does not report
details about the approach used in teaching
(resources, lesson content, tools and etc.), in addition,
the standards emphasize more the description of
concepts and good testing practices.
Benitti (2015) presents an evaluation of learning
objects to the teaching of software testing, using an
instructional design matrix for the analysis and design
stage, and Wilcoxon for statistical analysis. These
objects compose a systematic structure of contents
essential for the teaching of testing, being identified
from documentary research in the menu of several
Brazilian undergraduate courses and IEEE, MPS.BR
and others standards. Although the author posteriorly
built a tool to aid in the teaching of testing following
the systematic structure, the applied approach did not
involve the participation of a specialist to help in
clarifying doubts, and this can negatively affect the
student performance, since the specialist has an
important role contributing his/her knowledge and
technical experience on the subject in question and so
on.
In the work of Valle et al. (2015) a SLM was
conducted to identify the approaches that aid in
teaching of testing. The results indicate that there are
more occurrences of research on teaching of testing
with programming and use of educational games,
focusing mainly on the phase of test case design. The
author also identifies the highest occurrence of the
empirical evaluation for analysis of research results;
however, it is not shown how this approach has been.
In addition, few studies were observed, and most of
them presented partial results.
The work of Ribeiro and Paiva (2015) presents an
educational game for software testing learning. The
iLearTest is destined, specifically, for the assistance
of professionals who aim to obtain ISTQB
certification; however, all content is addressed only
to the foundation level based on the syllabus (study
material produced by ISTQB).
As it can be observed, no paper presented treats
the practice of the teaching of testing using any
strategies with gamification elements for exploratory
testing. Although Benitti (2015) present a tool to
provide a learning more interactive, and Ribeiro and
Paiva (2015) present an educational game destined to
testing learning in a playful way and also from Valle
et al. (2015) show that educational games are highly
observed in research, is still noticeable the need for a
systematic strategy to provide greater student
engagement. In this context, the present work differs
by presents a systematic strategy with the use of
several playful elements in the form of facilitating,
improving engagement, minimizing differences
between students and, above all, boosting the
teaching on ET in the academic context.
3 THE GAME APPROACH
Considering the ET approach, the present work uses
gamification elements, following the theme of
treasure hunting because this having similar ideas, for
example, exploring some areas by creating strategies
and solving puzzle to uncovering treasure (bugs)
hidden or lost.
The experiment should be applied as part of the
Software Quality course in the postgraduate in
Computer Science of the Federal University of Pará,
Brazil. This course is offered every semester for
postgraduate students, who they can be enrolled as
regular (engage in postgraduate from the selection
process) or special (they have not yet engaged in the
master's degree). Currently the course is taught by a
teacher with great academic and professional
experience in the field of software engineering,
because of this, many students who participate has a
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