Matthew Thornton, Stephen H. Edwards, Roy P. Tan, and Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones. Supporting student-written tests of GUI programs ACM. In Proceedings of the 39^th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. ACM Press, New York, NY, 2008, pp. 537-541.

Tools like JUnit and its relatives are making software testing reachable even for introductory students. At the same time, however, many introductory computer sciences courses use graphical interfaces as an “attention grabber” for students and as a metaphor for teaching object-oriented programming. Unfortunately, developing software tests for programs that have significant graphical user interfaces is beyond the abilities of typical students (and, for that matter, many educators). This paper describes a framework for combining readily available tools to create an infrastructure for writing tests for Java programs that have graphical user interfaces. These tests are level-appropriate for introductory students and fit in with current approaches in computer science education that incorporate testing in programming assignments. An analysis of data collected during actual student use of the framework in a CS1 course is presented.