Professor Richardson's primary teaching responsibilities are in the area of software engineering, with particular interests in software quality, requirements engineering, and testing & analysis.

From 2003 through 2010, Richardson was released from teaching responsibilities after being appointed Dean of the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences.

At the undergraduate level, she established the software engineering project course, with sponsoring companies who actively participate in projects with student teams, and has taught the introductory software engineering course on software methods and tools. She introduced a new undergraduate course covering two of the most critical parts of software production: software specification and quality engineering.

At the graduate level, she has taught courses on research advances in software engineering, software requirements, and testing and analysis as well as seminars on topics such as specification-based and architecture-based analysis and testing.