Teacher specification and student implementation of a unit testing methodology in an introductory programming course

  • Authors:

  • Robin M. Snyder

  • Affiliations:

  • College of Business Administration Savannah State University, Savannah, GA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Left to their own devices, students in the introductory CS1 programming course can have a difficult time developing and implementing a systematic testing methodology that covers sufficient test case to insure that the program being developed meets specifications and does not fail with test cases that meet the specifications. In addition, the teacher can use such testing support in more quickly grading programs that the students create. This paper presents a general specification method that allows the teacher to either specify the test cases for the program to be developed by the student or allow the student to create their own test cases. Either way, an implementation method for the students to follow in implementing the program functionality, user interface, and test cases is presented. The programming language used is C++, but the author has used a similar testing specification and implementation method in other programming courses using other programming languages.