Using PBL to Develop Software Test Engineers

The growing presence of the software in the products and services consumed daily by the society demands a level of completely dependent quality not only of technology, but of its development process and of the involved professionals. By focusing on the professionals responsible for quality assurance, as the Test Engineer, the skills and competences of these need to be developed on basis of a vision very critical and detailed of the problem. The Test Engineer needs to be an "explorer" of the solution, discovering hidden bugs and looking to elimination of defects of the applications. In this context, this article proposes an approach of teaching focuses on training of “test” discipline that make use of problembased learning to develop real skills required, supported by processes of planning and continuous assessment, in a computer aided software factory. To prove the applicability of this proposal, an empirical study was developed with positive results in teaching the discipline of “exploratory testing”.