Mobile software testing and evaluation on real devices in higher education: An Irish Open Device Lab Case Study

Abstract

Testing and evaluation on real devices are a requisite for mobile development, but this is still not mainstream practice. Software testing is not well accepted among students, being perceived as a boring topic or useless, so, to teach software testing in an effective way it's necessary to use real-life experimentation to show their importance. This study is part of comprehensive research, which aims to explain Open Device Labs (ODLs); a grass-roots community movement from the Web development industry which later reached the game and academic sector. The movement aims to democratize tests on real devices offering access to mobile devices as a free service to local tech communities. Currently, there are 149 labs located in 34 countries. Educational institutions have also established ODLs, but there is little and superficial information about them. This study presents an intrinsic qualitative case study about the IT Tralee ODL, one of the few labs hosted by a higher education institution. We used an inductive approach for data analysis which was based on online documents, interviews, direct observation, participant observation, and field notes. The findings contribute to understanding how an ODL hosted by an educational institution works, as well as its main issues and benefits.