Learning Styles and

Exploratory Testing
Andy Tinkham
Florida Institute of
Technology
atinkham@fit.edu
Topics of Discussion
 Exploratory testing
 Learning Styles
Why Should You Care?
 Learning styles theory may predict the
kinds of testing techniques you might
prefer
 Being aware of style preferences
presents new opportunities
 Other techniques you might also prefer
 Reminders of techniques you may not
normally prefer (or think of)
Exploratory Testing
 Simultaneous learning, planning and
execution
 Performed by nearly all testers at least
part of the time during their jobs
 Defect analysis
 Odd occurrence investigation

 Asking questions of application

Approaches to Exploration
 Tester generally has an overall purpose
(charter) in mind though the general
approach may differ from tester to tester
 Many different approaches for creating &
using exploratory tests
 Not mutually exclusive
 Individual testers adopt a subset of these
strategies
Accomplishing Charter
 Many different ways to accomplish
exploratory charter
 Choice varies by tester based on
 Past experience
 Specific skills
 Detailed knowledge
 Personality aspects
 Learning style
Learning Styles
 “Characteristicstrengths and
preferences in the ways [people] take
in and process information” (Richard Felder, “Matters of
Style”
Style”)

 May change slowly over time or vary

over differing subject areas
Learning Styles Cautions
 Learning styles are only preferences
 People can express tendencies from
both sides of a continuum
 Each type has strengths and
weaknesses
 Descriptive, not normative
 No “best pattern” of results
 No inherent superiority of any placement
Felder-Silverman Learning
Styles Model
5 continua
 Sensory/Intuitive
 Visual/Verbal

 Inductive/Deductive

 Active/Reflective

 Sequential/Global

Where do you fall?

Sensory People
 Rely on info perceived through external
senses
 Generally attentive to details
 Usually observant
 Favor facts and observable phenomena
 Patient with detail
 Prefer problems with well-defined standard
solutions
 Dislike surprises and complications that make
them deviate from the solutions
Intuitive People
 Rely on internal information (memory,
conjecture, interpretation)
 May be bored by details
 Easily handle abstraction
 Good at grasping new concepts
 Often imaginative and insightful
Visual People
 Retain more information they get from visual
images
 Pictures
 Movies
 Diagrams
 Demonstrations
 May have problems remembering information
they simply hear
 Majority of people (at least in Western
cultures)
Verbal People
 Retain more information they hear and
read
 Lectures
 Written words

 Mathematical formulas

 Think in words more than pictures

Inductive People
 Prefer to start with specifics and derive
the generalities
 Like to be given a set of facts,
observations, or an example & tease
out the fundamental principles
 “The natural human learning style” (Felder &
Silverman)

 Often need to see the motivation for

learning something
Deductive People
 Start with generalities and apply to
specific situations
 Learn basic principles & determine how
to apply them
 “The natural human teaching style”
Active People
 Need to do something with information
as soon as they get it
 Might discuss information with others or
experiment with the information
 Tend to like to work in groups
 Like to find solutions that work
 In general are the people who design
and carry out the experiments
Reflective People
 Think about information before they use it
 Prefer to work alone or with at most one
other person whom they trust
 Need time to mentally manipulate the
information to see what they can get from it
 Define the problems that need to be solved
Sequential People
 Learn material in a logically ordered
progression
 Incrementally build on the knowledge
they have already learned
 Strong in convergent thinking and
analysis
 Solve problems in ways that make
sense to other people
Global People
 Tend to see the big picture
 Spend a period of time not understanding
until something clicks
 Tend to be more apt to see connections
(often to completely different disciplines)
 May seem to leap directly to solutions
(skipping intermediate steps)
 May need to fully understand something
before working with it
Theoretical Predictions
A large component of exploratory
testing is learning
 Learning styles may affect how people
perform testing activities
 The following slides are some
theoretical predictions of ways that
styles might correlate with testing
 We’ll be investigating these more
Sensory Testers
 Might focus on actual observations of
software
 Solutions that have worked in the past for
specific bugs
 More likely to begin testing prior to creating
models
 More apt to consult specifications
 Learning based on experimenting on the
product
 Doing research to predict the behavior
Intuitive Testers
 Focus on internal models of the
software being tested
 Risk-based approach to testing, trying
to think of ways the program can fail
 Like it when mental models are proven
to be incorrect
Visual Testers
 Tend to work off an internal picture-
based model
 Tend to use visual portrayals of the
steps for their tests
 Take notes while they explore by
making diagrams and pictures
Verbal Testers
 Tend to use textual-based models
 Take verbal notes while they explore
 More apt to choose the detailed specs
to work from than models
Inductive Testers
 Gather as many specifics as possible and
generalize to the application
 Techniques
 Potential defects
 Changes made to the application
 Application history
 Defect reports
 Tech support database
 Published documents on the application or similar
products
Deductive Testers
 Keep a collection of general principles
and heuristics and then find ways to
apply them
 Many traditional testing techniques are
deductive – testers learn a skill and
figure out how to apply it in their
current situation
Active Testers
 Do very hands-on testing
 Perform test cases rapidly
 View each test case as an experiment
 Bounce ideas and results off other
members of the group to solicit
feedback
Reflective Testers
 Perform far fewer tests
 Tend to do tests that are more likely to
find bugs
 Prefer to work alone & thus may seem
anti-social
 Tend to develop more complex tests
and scenarios
Sequential Testers
 Seem to get off to a faster start
 Build test plans as they go
 Work with however much information they
have
 Able to explain tests clearly to people after
they have performed them
 Will have tests grow in complexity over time
as they gain deeper understanding of system
Global Testers
 Get off to a slower start
 May have problems understanding the
point of the application
 Able to create detailed, complex
scenarios that draw on connections
others might not see (once they get the
critical piece of information)
Key Points
 Knowing where you fall on the continua
can help you understand yourself better
 Your preferences can help you find new
techniques that fit your style
 Don’t be blind to things outside your
preferences
Your Turn
 Questions?
 Feedback?