Software Testing at University of Technology Sydney

I no longer teach this class. However, I do teach HSC students wanting to get into tech. See Catherine Karena from Test-Ed for details on how you can get experience based training in the tech industry.

I’m lecturing at the University of Technology this year. I’ve revamped it the course from last year, placing more of an emphasis on the testers skill. This is essential if we are going to improve the quality of testing within organisations, and its why large organisations are excited about and want to work with UTS to make this course happen. As far as I’m aware, this is the first course in Australia of this kind.
The course is part online part tutorial. There is a big emphasis on learning by doing, with lots of opportunity to practice testing. There’s also an opportunity to work with companies, performing testing and reporting to real stakeholders, giving you a real opportunity to experience what software testing is about.

Here’s an overview of the course content:

Software Testing

This course teaches postgraduates the essential skills required in software testing. Learn how to test software in a way that offers stakeholders valuable and insightful information on the quality of the product by asking useful questions of people and the product you are testing.

To do that, you will learn the principles of context driven testing, critical thinking skills, test strategy, test planning, collaboration and communication and documentation.

Subject Objectives

• On completion of this subject, the student will have the potential to:
• Understand how context drives how software testing is performed
• Think critically in software testing
• Creating Test Strategies
• Know how to model a product for the purposes of software testing
• Become proficient in bug finding
• Learn how to test effectively
• Create test reports that provide relevant information to software testing stakeholders

On completion of this subject, the student will improve

• Their understanding of what software testing is and how it relates to other roles in product development
• Their ability to think critically by asking useful questions.

Teaching and learning strategies

This course is based on the principles of experiential learning with an emphasis of understanding through doing. Each topic will be taught through a practical exercise. Students will have the opportunity to work individually and in groups to complete assignments throughout the course. There will be a final group assessment where students will work in a company to create a test strategy, test software and develop a test report on the software tested. 

This course is aimed at postgraduate students who wish to learn how to test software in an applied and thoughtful way. Some degree of technical understanding is beneficial but not essential.

Content

This subject will cover the following topics:
1) Critical Thinking in Software Testing
2) Test Strategy: Modelling
3) Test Strategy: Coverage
4) Exploratory & Scripted Testing
5) Oracles and Bug Finding
6) Test Reports and Bug Reporting
7) Testability: Tools in Software Testing
8) Advanced Modelling – State Machines
9)  Communication with Stakeholders

Though the course is part of the post graduate program, they’ve agreed to allow people to take the module as a course in its own right. If your interested in taking part in this course,  go to the UTS website