Humor in Software Testing Education
For educators in software testing, this paper provides evidence that humor is a low-threshold pedagogical tool to enhance student experience and inclusivity.
Humor in software testing assignments significantly improved students' emotional engagement, sense of belonging, and creative thinking, with particularly strong effects for female students.
Software testing is often perceived as monotonous, which can negatively influence students' emotional engagement with testing. While prior work suggests that humor can increase engagement in professional software development contexts, we know little about humor's effect in software testing education. This paper explores how humorous elements in software testing assignments affect students' emotional engagement, sense of belonging, and creative thinking. We introduced humor in introductory software testing courses at universities in Canada and Germany, and conducted a mixed-methods study with students. Our results show that humor had a strong positive influence on students' experiences of software testing. Students perceived testing as more engaging and less monotonous, felt more comfortable and accepted in class, and reported increased creative thinking about testing tasks. These effects were particularly strong for female students, especially with respect to sense of belonging. Our findings suggest that humor represents a low-threshold pedagogical approach which is beneficial for students, and has the potential to create a more welcoming learning environment.