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Virginia Tech

Web-CAT: A Web-based Center for Automated Testing

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The fundamentals of software testing and related activities are often elusive in undergraduate curricula. A direct consequence of the lack of software testing efforts during education is the huge losses suffered by the software industry when applications are not sufficiently tested. Software practitioners have exhorted faculty members and institutions to teach more software testing in universities. The purpose of this research is to provide answers to the needs of such practitioners and introduce software-testing activities throughout the curriculum. The most important goal is to introduce software-testing education without requiring a significant amount of extra effort on behalf of faculty members or teaching assistants. The approach taken comprises the development of the Web-based Center for Automated Testing (Web-CAT) and the introduction of test-driven development (TDD) in courses. Web-CAT serves as a learning environment for software testing tasks and helps automatically assess student assignments. A comparison of student programs developed using Web-CAT with historical records indicated a significant decrease in the number of bugs in submitted programs. Undergraduate students also received exposure to the principles of software testing and were able to write test cases that were on an average better than those generated by an automated test case generator designed specifically for the assignment.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Computer Science
Department dc:contributor.department
Computer Science
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2003

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Shah, Anuj Ramesh
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Edwards, Stephen H.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Arthur, James D.
  • Rosson, Mary Beth

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
etd-05222003-225759
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/33109

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Shah, Anuj Ramesh. Web-CAT: A Web-based Center for Automated Testing. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/33109