Software testing is a necessary aspect of software development. With high expectations placed on software testers and a shortage of qualified professionals, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have emerged as a potential solution to improve software testing education. MOOCs provide accessible education, bridging the gap between formal education and industry expectations. We investigate key aspects of and compare concepts of software testing MOOCs with university curricula and industry expectations. The findings show that a MOOC on average covers more concepts than a single university course. Additionally, MOOCs align well with what the industry expects from software testing practitioners.

Software testing is generally acknowledged to be an important weapon in the arsenal of software engineers to produce correct and reliable software systems. However, given the importance of the topic, little is known about where software engineers get their testing knowledge and skills from. Is this through (higher) education, training programmes in the industry, or rather is it self-taught? In this paper, we investigate the curricula of 100 highly ranked universities and survey 51 software engineers to shed light on the state-of-the-practice in software testing education, in terms of both academic education and education of software engineers in the industry.