Skip to main content

Let’s Make BBST Courses More Accessible

Are time and financial worries keeping students away?


Second in a series.

 In my previous post, I wrote about enhancing the student and instructor experience in the AST’s BBST courses by focusing on updating the Fieldstones. Today, I'm talking about another area I would like to concentrate on if elected to the Board of Directors: finding ways to make the BBST courses accessible to more people.

 When I say “make the BBST courses accessible to more people,” I’m not implying that the courses are in any way exclusive (other than requiring students to be members of the AST) or elitist. What I do mean is there are many reasons people are unable to take the BBST courses, and I think it would benefit the AST, and better help it to achieve its objectives, if we were to look into what those reasons are and find ways to resolve them.

 One of the more common obstacles I see involves the time commitment required to succeed in the courses. One of our guiding principles is that we view software testing as a cognitively complex activity that requires critical thinking, effective communication, and rapid self-directed learning. To me, that means the BBST student needs to go beyond merely remembering or understanding the material the course presents. Using the language of Bloom’s Taxonomy, I believe the goal is for the student to not only apply what they learn in the course, but use it to create something new, critically examine information and make judgments, and take information apart and explore relationships. That, admittedly, takes time, and the general guideline for the AST’s BBST courses is to allow roughly 10 to 12 hours per week for study.

 But I think many people who have taken a BBST course can agree the study guideline is really the minimum suggested time allotment, and students can, and often do, spend much more time on the course to get the most out of it. This can be a problem because everyone has limited time (BBST students are no exception!) and other commitments, such as work and family or community and charitable involvement, are all vying for that limited time. 

 Another common obstacle is financial. Although the courses are reasonably priced, especially when compared to similar training options, there are those for which it can be a bit costly. Do we want to adjust the price of the course, award scholarships, or give a student discount as we do with membership fees? There are many ways that this can be addressed, each with its own intricacies and issues. 

 So, what do we do?

 I believe we need to initially spend time to identify some of the more common obstacles to BBST participation, and then work collectively to find ways to lower or remove those obstacles. 

 Because, the BBST courses are an essential and integral part of what the AST brings to the community, and changes of this nature can have wide-ranging and unanticipated consequences, I think this effort needs to involve more than just the Board of Directors and the Education Committee, and should include involvement by the general AST membership as well.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Takeaways from the Continuous Automated Testing Tutorial at CAST2014

I had the opportunity to attend Noah Sussman's tutorial on Continuous Automated Testing last week as part of CAST2014. It was a great tutorial, with most of the morning spent on the theory and concepts behind continuous automated testing, and the afternoon spent with some hands-on exercises. I think that Noah really understands the problems associated with test automation in an agile environment, and the solutions that he presented in his tutorial show the true depth of his understanding of, and insight into, those problems. Here are some of the main highlights and takeaways that I got from his tutorial at CAST2014. Key Concepts Design Tools – QA and testing are design tools, and the purpose of software testing is to design systems that are deterministic Efficiency-to-Thoroughness-Trade-Offs – (ETTO) We do not always pick the best option, we pick the one that best meets the immediate needs Ironies of automation – Automation makes things more complex and, while tools can make
11 comments
Read more

Let’s Continue to Drive Software Testing Education Forward

It’s Time to Embrace the Student Who Learns Differently Last in a series. In my last two posts I’ve written about enhancing the student and instructor experience in the AST’s BBST courses by focusing on updating the Fieldstones and making BBST courses more accessible by identifying some of the more common obstacles to BBST participation, and then working collectively to find ways to lower or remove those obstacles. In this post, I want to discuss the third and final area I would like to concentrate on if elected to the Board of Directors: researching and establishing alternate approaches to teaching that better suit different learning styles. As members of the AST, we have access to some of the best information and training available in the field of software testing. The AST hosts the Conference of the Association for Software Testing (CAST) each year, providing full-day tutorials, keynotes, and track sessions. They also offer four separate BBST courses:  Foundations, Bug
11 comments
Read more

Book Review - The Shape of Actions: What Humans and Machines Can Do

If you’re a tester and you’ve been around social media, attended a conference, watched a webinar, read blog posts, or watched videos of other testers speaking on YouTube, you may have heard at least one mention of polimorphic and/or mimeomorphic actions. But what does it mean when someone says that an action is polimorphic or mimeomorphic? Where do these ideas come from, and why, as testers, do we care? The concepts of polimorphic and mimeomorphic actions come from the book The Shape of Actions: What Humans and Machines Can Do, by Harry Collins and Martin Kusch. In the book the authors develop a new theory about what they call the shape of actions. I’ve attempted to cover the highlights and general topics of discussion, or at least what I found most interesting, from each chapter in the summary below. Chapter 1 – Humans and Machines In Chapter 1, Collins and Kusch introduce the reader to their theory which basically states that humans can do three things – they can do polimorp
1 comment
Read more