GAMIFICATION IN SOFTWARE TESTING EDUCATION: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

Software testing is an essential but often underestimated aspect of computer science, with computer science graduates often lacking in testing skills, which is why software testing is considered a challenging yet poorly valued subject area in computer science education. The systematic application of game design elements in environments outside of games (gamification) has proven to be a very promising pedagogical approach to solve these motivational deficiencies and, however, there is no consolidated evidence base that systematically characterizes the application of gamification in software testing education and the measurable impact on students' motivation and learning outcomes. This systematic literature review (SLR) is designed to find, analyze, and synthesize the previous empirical and design-based studies on gamification in software testing education and give a structured overview of the tools and the dominant game mechanics, the methodologies employed in the studies, and the evidence of the effectiveness of gamification in software testing education. Using a predefined Boolean search string in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 guidelines [33] a structured search was conducted in IEEE Xplore and Google Scholar databases for the following keywords: gamification, game-based learning, and serious games, as well as software testing, test-driven development, mutation testing and unit testing. 74 records were retrieved, with 11 of them being duplicates, and 63 unique studies were available and were included and excluded based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, after which 44 studies were identified for final synthesis which took place between 2015 and 2025. The results indicate that the gamification has been applied in various software testing sub-domains, such as mutation testing (n = 9), unit testing (n = 7), and exploratory testing (n = 4), and many popular tools used to implement gamification exist, such as Code Defenders, GAMFLEW, CoverBot, Code Critters, TSGame, and IntelliGame. The most commonly used game elements are competition mechanics, points and scoring systems, badges, leaderboards and serious game frameworks. The evidence-based research on the effectiveness of gamification is based on three types of studies controlled experiments, quasi-experimental studies, and longitudinal case studies and all of these studies show positive results in terms of student engagement, motivation, and time-on-task, with some studies reporting statistically significant improvements in test quality metrics. There is, however, limited evidence on long-term retention and transfer of skills. This review shows that gamification is a potential and emerging pedagogical method for the field of Software Testing education and identifies the need for further rigorous experimental designs, multi-institutional replicas and longitudinal studies.