Niels Doorn, Ph.D. student in Computer Science Education

My name is Niels Doorn, I work at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences as a team leader / lecturer / researcher at the Informatics program in Emmen, The Netherlands. I am a Ph.D. student at the Open Universiteit, and this is my personal website about my CSEd research into improving software testing in computer science education.

Focus of my research

Together with other researchers I want to improve the teaching of software testing in higher educational computer science programs. We believe that due to the ever gaining importance of software systems in our society, the quality of these systems need to be as high as possible. Of course, this is almost an impossible task given the nature and complexity of software systems. It is therefore important to pay attention to software testing education.

My research is in Computer Science Education to gain insights into students’ sensemaking of test case design to be able to design a teaching-learning strategy that supports students to learn exploratory and model based software testing which:

• works in different educational contexts
• is integrable in existing courses
• can be taught from the start of the program

In the end, all computer science graduates should be “Test Infected”, a term coined by Martin Fowler to describe the intrinsic motivation to not accept untested software (although I prefer the term Test Obsessed). For this research, I am using Design Research in Education.

Current research

Currently, I am working on:

• studying the sensemaking approaches of students and experts while modelling test cases
• researching the effects of introducing testing early, seamlessly and subtle in existing courses
• developing a serious game to improve engagement of students in software testing

Academic services

I find it important to contribute to our academic society. I am also looking at reviewing opportunities and guiding master students.

Current work

Currently, I am participating in the following:

• I am a member of the program committee of SIGCSE TS 2025 (PC member of Posters)
• I am member of the student council of the Institute for Programming research and Algorithmics.
• I am a member of the NHL Stenden knowledge group Design Based Education
• I am lecturing the LaTeX workshop at Open Universiteit
• I am one of PhD students who lecture the testing workshop at the Open Universiteit Informatics gatherings

Past work

Previously I have played an active role in the following items:

• I served as a member of the program committee of SIGCSE TS 2024
• I was one of the organizers of the evaLuation and assEssment on softwARe eNgineers’ Education and tRaining (LEARNER) 2023 workshop, which was part of the International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE-2023)
• I was a member of the organizing committee of NIOC 2023.
• I was one of the student competition chairs of A-Test 2022.
• I did a poster presentation at the inauguration of Dr. Migchiel van Diggelen (website in Dutch).
• And I was one of the two student volunteer chairs for the 15th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST) 2022.

Publications

This is a list of my publications. You can click on the links to access the PDF’s. You can find a BibTeX file with all references in mypublications.bib.