Abstract:

The decrease in interest in engineering studies is a phenomenon widely observed in Europe and also in Ukraine. The decrease in the number of students in technical and pure sciences (below the 10% of total number of students) happened in the majority of European countries but not in China or India, where every year there are hundreds of thousands of graduates with engineering diplomas.
Other side of the problem is that last year students have low motivation during studying courses which are not close to the practice. So motivation increasing and interest rising to technical studies is very important task. Thus completely new course Testing of Program System is developed for new specialty at CAD Department. New course includes a lot of theoretical information concerning methods and methodologies of testing and also about software development lifecycle. To increase interest to such course following solution were proposed: we will use project simulation game and will try to teach about testing during whole software lifecycle. Now question is ‘How?’
All students were divided in few teams, every team had team leader who is responsible of results of the team’s work. Also every student got personal home tasks to solve and pass. As real project was chosen customized set of java applications prepared by 3 year students during laboratory works. All communication and artifact storage were performed using Google Apps: Google Docs,
Google Sites, Google Calendar, Gmail

Topics which were covered are following:
1. Software development lifecycle
2. Test planning
3. Test methodologies
4. Testing techniques
5. Risk management
6. Team communication

But the main point which allows us to achieve great results is using of workshop format instead of classical lectures and practice. Main approach is using as much communication during session as possible to make knowledge transfer from teacher to student as fast as possible. Such active approach give opportunities to students ask all questions immediately and receive answer from teachers practical experience. Also it is important to note that working not as individuals but in teams provokes competitions and as result rise interest to studying. Of course all students are notified that during this course real practical experience is discussed. So successful exam completion helps to find future work faster.

Results which were obtained: after first try this spring student’s feedbacks shown that they are really motivated to attend classes because it was unusual and interesting. One more thing - course is very close to real work in modern IT companies so they got familiar with future work already at university and can decide which IT direction can be used in future, means that not only programmers are needed in the market.

From teacher’s point of view we understood that have chosen right direction in teaching approach but of course it takes a lot of time to prepare such syllabus.

Keywords:

Workshop, education, testing.