{"id":381,"date":"2014-02-14T19:10:14","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T19:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/?p=381"},"modified":"2014-02-15T00:59:38","modified_gmt":"2014-02-15T00:59:38","slug":"new-book-foundations-of-software-testing-a-bbst-workbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/?p=381","title":{"rendered":"New Book: Foundations of Software Testing–A BBST Workbook"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Book: Foundations of Software Testing\u2014A BBST Workbook<\/p>\n

Rebecca Fiedler and I just published our first book together,\u00a0Foundations of Software Testing\u2014A BBST Workbook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Becky and I started working on the instructional design for the online version of the\u00a0BBST (Black Box Software Testing) course<\/a>\u00a0in 2004. Since then,Foundations<\/em>\u00a0has gone through three major revisions.\u00a0Bug Advocacy<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Test Design<\/em>\u00a0have gone through two.<\/p>\n

Our Workbooks mark our first major step toward the next generation of BBST\u2122.<\/p>\n

We are creating the new versions of BBST through\u00a0Kaner, Fiedler & Associates, a training company that we formed to provide an income stream for ongoing evolution of these courses<\/a>. BBST is a registered trademark of Kaner, Fiedler & Associates.<\/p>\n

What’s in the Book<\/h2>\n

The Workbook includes slides, lecture transcripts, orientation activities and feedback, application activities, exam advice, and author reflections. Here are some some details:<\/p>\n

All the course slides<\/h3>\n

Foundations<\/em>\u00a0has 304 slides. Some of these are out of date. We provide notes on these in the Author’s Reflections.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A transcript of the six lectures.<\/h3>\n

The transcripts are almost word-for-word the same as the spoken lecture. They actually reproduce the script that I wrote for the lecture. In a few cases, my scripts are a little longer than what actually made it past the video edits. We lay the transcript and the slides out together, side-by-side. In an 8.5×11 printed book, this is a great format for taking notes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t translate to Kindle well, so there is no Kindle edition of the book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Four Orientation Activities<\/h3>\n

Orientation activities introduce students to a key challenge considered in a lecture. The student puzzles through the activity for 30 to 90 minutes, typically before watching the lecture, then sees how the lecture approaches this type of problem. The typical\u00a0Foundations<\/em>\u00a0course has two to four of these.<\/p>\n

The workbook presents the instructions for four activities, along with detailed feedback on them, based on past performance of students in the online and university courses.<\/p>\n

I revised, rewrote or added (new) all of these activities for this Workbook. Because, in my opinion, the most important learning in BBST comes from what the students actually do in the class, the new Orientation and Application activities create a substantial revision to the course.<\/p>\n

In my university courses, I practice continuous quality improvement, revising all of them every term in response to (a) my sense (and to what ever relevant data I have collected) about strengths and weaknesses that showed up in previous of the course or (b) ideas that have demonstrated their value in other courses and can be imported into this one. Most of the updates are grounded in a long series of revisions that I used and evaluated in my university-course version of BBST.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two Application Activities<\/h3>\n

An application activity applies ideas or techniques presented in a lecture or developed over several lectures. The typical application activity calls for two to six hours of work, per student. The typical\u00a0Foundations<\/em>\u00a0course has one to two of these.<\/p>\n

One of these is revised from the public BBST, the other completely rewritten.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Advice on answering our essay-style exam questions<\/h3>\n

The advice runs 11 pages. I also provide a practice question and detailed feedback on the structure of the answer.<\/p>\n

I think the advice is good for anyone taking the course, but it is particularly focused on university students who are preparing for an exam that will yield graded results (A, B, Pass-with-distinction, etc.). The commercial versions of BBST are typically pass-fail, so some of the fine details in this advice are beyond the needs of those readers. If you\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0a university student, I recommend this as a tighter and more polished presentation than the exam-preparation essay included in the public course.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Author reflections<\/h3>\n

My\u00a0reflections<\/em>\u00a0present my sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the current course, the ways we are addressing those with the new activities, and some of the changes we see coming in the next generation of videos.<\/p>\n

Because\u00a0Foundations<\/em>\u00a0is written to introduce students to the fundamental challenges in software testing, some of my\u00a0reflections<\/em>\u00a0add commentary on widely-debated issues in the field. Some of these might become focus points for the usual crowd to practice their\u00a0Sturm und Drang<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Who the Book is For<\/h2>\n

We want to support three groups with the BBST Workbooks:<\/p>\n