Teaching software testing through the development of an automated testing system

In recent years, software testing is becoming more popular and important in the software development industry. At the same time, more software testing courses are developed to fulfill the training needs for software testing professionals in the workforce as well as computer science/software engineering students studying in universities. However, it is generally agreed that software testing is a difficult subject to be taught within the duration of a course. Through real life teaching experience in a university software testing course, we found that students can learn the details of software testing principles and attain the testing techniques more effectively by including a practical project component in the software testing course curriculum, requiring them to plan, design, implement and test an automated software testing system.