Black-Box Testing in the Introductory Programming Course

Introductory programming courses are often a challenge to both the students taking them and the instructors teaching them. The scope and complexity of topics required for learning how to program can distract from the importance of learning how to test. Even the textbooks on introductory programming rarely address the topic of testing. Yet, anyone who will be involved in the system development process should understand the critical need for testing and know how to design test cases that identify bugs and verify the correct functionality of applications. This paper describes a testing exercise that has been integrated into an introductory programming course as part of an overall effort to focus attention on effective software testing techniques.1 A comparison of the performance on a common programming assignment of students who had participated in the testing exercise to that of students who had not demonstrates the value of following such an approach.