Unit testing challenges with automated marking

Teaching software testing presents difficulties due to its abstract and conceptual nature. The lack of tangible outcomes and limited emphasis on hands-on experience further compound the challenge, often leading to difficulties in comprehension for students. This can result in waning engagement and diminishing motivation over time. In this paper, we introduce online unit testing challenges with automated marking as a learning tool via the EdStem platform to enhance students' software testing skills and understanding of software testing concepts. Then, we conducted a survey to investigate the impact of the unit testing challenges with automated marking on student learning. The results from 92 participants showed that our unit testing challenges have kept students more engaged and motivated, fostering deeper understanding and learning, while the automated marking mechanism enhanced students' learning progress, helping them to understand their mistakes and misconceptions quicker than traditional-style human-written manual feedback. Consequently, these results inform educators that the online unit testing challenges with automated marking improve overall student learning experience, and are an effective pedagogical practice in software testing.