In the world of software, the buzzword is automation. Everything from development to testing is being automated. And it is quite expected as the sole purpose of building computers was to automate repetitive jobs that do not need human intelligence. So, it is no wonder that automation will be the ultimate goal.

The software industry largely encompasses the new software development and existing software-based development. A huge portion of the second category is e-learning. In e-learning, software technology is used to produce online learning material and its delivery platform, which is popularly known as a learning management system or LMS.

The development of LMS, e-learning courses, and deployment of courses on LMS needs extensive testing to make sure they function properly. Any glitch in the functionality will render the course useless.

Some of the basic testing required for e-learning are as follows:

• Testing the content presentation such as what appears and how it appears
• Testing the functionality such as interactivities, quizzes, simulations, etc.
• Testing the multi-device compatibility – This has become a critical criterion of late as e-learning courses are being accessed from a wide variety of devices and platforms. We have touchscreen devices, non-touchscreen devices, many browsers, mobile devices, tablets, mobile operating systems like Android, iOS, desktop-based operating systems such as Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. This requires testing on virtual devices as well as the actual device. This makes the testing process time-consuming and costly.
• Testing the stress /performance capability is absolutely necessary to make sure that the system does not break down when a large number of learners are simultaneously accessing various content
• Testing the responsiveness of responsive eLearning systems which require content to change very often
• Testing the availability of content at the point-of-need
• Testing the synching of video and audio on multiple devices simultaneously

Prospect of Automation Testing

Testing the various aspects of e-learning courses and platform needs a great amount of time and manpower cost. The adoption of BYOD (bring your own device) has increased the landscape of mobile devices that any e-Learning course and the system must support. Thus multiplying the time and cost by the variety of target devices.

Automation testing comes to the rescue here. Let’s first understand what automation testing does. Here multiple test cases are executed simultaneously. The test cases are based on pre-defined test scripts as per the requirement. These scripts are run through automated functional testing tools. In manual testing, these tests are done by a human by actually running the course. Thus the key difference between manual testing and automation testing is the involvement of humans in executing the test case.

Benefits of Automated Testing

Like any automation system, the benefits of automated testing are multifold in terms of cost, efficiency, time, and productivity.

• Automated testing is fast as it is run by a machine. Humans cannot do the testing at the speed of machines.
• Automated testing is cost-effective as it can do the work faster.
• Automated testing is effective in the sense that it will not miss any test case which humans can miss due to the innate nature of human efficiency
• Automated testing is highly time-efficient and can give the test result quickly for the development team to do the fixes.

With so many benefits of automated testing, the debate starts creeping out whether manual testing can be completely replaced by automated testing. With the advancement of technology, the capability and range of automated testing are increasing at a rapid pace. AI-powered automated testing systems are quite efficient and smart at testing.

However, there is a big difference between software testing and e-learning testing.

The key objective of testing a software application is to ensure that functions seamlessly, efficiently, and can be used as intended. On the other hand, the most critical objective of testing an e-Learning program is to ensure that it is “learnable”. This means the e-learning course must ensure that the audience gets the required learning out of it. This is something no machine can do. This is still very humane in nature.

Apart from this, another key aspect that automated testing cannot do is usability testing or UAT testing. This is highly dependent on human interaction and the automation scripts are simply not capable to carry out such tests, at least not in near future.

To automate or Not to Automate

The question drills down to our objective of testing. As mentioned earlier, many aspects of software functionality testing can be automated with great benefits. However, there are softer aspects of e-learning that need human intervention. The key is to strike the right balance between automation and manual testing.

When you buy something, say a dress, what do you look for? Design, color, fit, comfort, fabric material, etc.? What are these parameters? These are nothing but the quality of the dress.

Quality Assurance In eLearning

Quality is perhaps the most critical deciding factor in the purchase decision process. And it applies to all industries. An eLearning business can thrive or fail depending on the quality of its products or services. The quality of a product or service determines customer satisfaction, which in turn, decides the fate of the business. The eLearning industry is no exception. Being in the learning industry, eLearning products have far more impact on quality—first, as a product and second, as an influencer on the performance of the customer’s workforce. Thus, Quality Assurance or QA is even more important in eLearning.

The most important function of QA is to find and eliminate all preventable errors well before you deliver the product to your client. However, quality is often a misunderstood concept.

What Is Meant By Quality?

In layman’s terms, the quality of a product or service simply means that the product or service should be able to do what it is expected to do. It seems quite simple, but achieving quality is mischievously tricky and difficult. Let’s understand the concept of quality with the example of two car models: Model A and Model B. Both are of the same make and come with the same specifications except that Model B does not have a factory-fitted AC, while Model A comes with factory-fitted AC.

Do You Think The Quality Of Model B Is Better?

Surprisingly, the answer is No. Model B is not supposed to have AC, so the non-availability of AC is not a quality parameter for this model. However, for Model A, the proper functioning of the AC is a quality parameter since it is supposed to have an AC.

What Does It Take To Ensure Quality?

Short answer—very simple—rigorous quality testing. Long answer, it’s a very critical part of any process and needs a careful multi-layer quality assurance process. Let’s find out more.

What Is Quality Assurance?

Quality assurance is a method of identifying and correcting defects in products or services so that the final output to the customer is defect-free and conforms to the agreed level of quality. Quality assurance is a critical aspect of all delivery teams. Concerning the software and eLearning industry, quality assurance has a very significant role to play in the development life cycle.

In reference to eLearning or content services, the QA process must focus on 3 key elements:

Textual information

Content is the king and so is the textual information. The QA process must check for any inaccuracies in content in terms of language, grammar, tone, readability, and so on.
Visual design

A key element of eLearning is its visual design. A good visual design can enhance the learning experience and a bad design can ruin it. The QA process must ensure that the design is appropriate for the target audience, supports textual information, and does not distract the learner from core learning.
Functionality

User navigation and interactivity form a key layer of eLearning. The QA process perhaps contributes the most in ensuring the functionalities of an eLearning module are proper, as per clients’ expectations. Any bug in the functionality can render the module useless. For example, if the user is not able to click the Next button to move to the next screen, the module has no use. Also, the use of complicated functionalities makes it difficult for the learner to use the module.

eLearning And UAT

UAT or User Acceptance Testing is a critical part of the QA process that evaluates the product from the users’ perspective. It intends to find out whether the end user of the product will be able to use the product in a meaningful way and with ease. UAT plays a critical role in eLearning as it ensures the product is useful for end users, which in turn ensures customer satisfaction. Thus, QA plays a critical role in customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

While eLearning development is predominantly dependent on both an Instructional Designer and media designer, the role of QA is often not visible upfront. However, QA plays the most significant role in ensuring the final output is acceptable to customers and thus helps in the growth of the business.

Quality – the single most influential parameter that decides whether a business thrives or dooms – is also the most often misunderstood concept.

Be it the service sector or product sector, quality of output is of supreme importance to maintain and enhance customer satisfaction.

A very important aspect of ensuring quality is rigorous quality checks or QC. QC is done in a phased manner – at first, Functional testing is done, which comprises, Unit testing, Smoke testing, Sanity testing, and Integration testing. Functional testing aims to figure out as many bugs as possible so that no error creeps in the final version.

Functional testing is followed by Retesting and Regression testing. While many do not clearly distinguish between Retesting and Regression testing, these are two distinct types of testing with different scopes.

Let’s first understand what Retesting and Regression testing means.

What is Retesting?

Retesting is nothing but limited functional testing on the updated version of the product wherein all the functionalities with identified bugs are tested again to check whether fixes are done properly or not.

The scope of Retesting is thus limited to the test cases where bugs were found in the initial Functional testing.

What is Regression testing?

Regression testing is based on the idea that while fixing identified bugs, some new bugs might get into the system which was not present in the original version. Thus, a Retesting will not be able to filter out those new bugs.

Here comes the role of Regression testing wherein the product is testing to ensure that no new bugs have been introduced in the earlier functional parts.

Comparing Regression Testing with Retesting 

Though sounds similar, Regression testing and Retesting differ significantly in various aspects.

The table summaries the key differences between Regression testing and Retesting.

What to choose – Regression testing or Retesting?

There is technically no choice between Regression testing and Retesting as both serve different purposes. Retesting is necessary to ensure that bugs are fixed. There is no question of avoiding Retesting or priority of doing Retesting.

Sometimes, due to various reasons, such as resource crunch or time constraints, Regression testing takes a backseat. However, Regression testing is a part and parcel of a quality assurance process.

Timing – whether to do parallelly or sequentially

Retesting always takes priority. Once the identified bugs are fixed, the revised build is parked to the QC team for Retesting.

As mentioned earlier, Retesting test cases are already defined from the bug reports of functional testing. So, the QC team tests the revised build against the bug reports and checks whether all the reported bugs are closed.

The Regression testing ideally should be done after the closure of Retesting. This is so because if there are some open bugs found in Retesting, fixing those may result in the introduction of new bugs.

These new bugs won’t be detected is Regression testing is done parallelly. However, due to time constraints or resource constraints, sometimes Regression testing is taken up parallelly.

Such cases need to be closely monitored to ensure no bugs leak to the final product.

Conclusion

Both Regressions testing and Retesting are an integral part of the QC process and needs rigorous implementation. Each has its scope and contribution to the quality of the final deliverable.

In today’s highly competitive world, quality is often the deciding factor for success. How do you make sure that product or service you are delivering conforms to quality standards? Which model of quality testing do you follow? How do you take your quality testing to the next level? While some companies rely on their internal quality testing team, some take the help of leading quality assurance service provider which provide software testing & quality assurance services, content testing, browser testing, bug tracking, regression testing, etc.

There are various models of software development and testing that software test service providers follow. For example, some follow the Waterfall model in which development process proceeds like water flow, moving in a sequence through various phases such as analysis, projecting, realization, testing, implementation, and support. An extension of classic Waterfall model is V Model where there is an associated test stage for each of the development stages. Here also, the next stage starts only when the previous phase is complete. Agile model is becoming popular now-a-days which involves frequent and dynamic changes in the requirement as per the needs of the client.

A recent survey conducted by RightScale has found that 54% of the companies have adopted DevOps model and the interest around DevOps is increasing rapidly.

DevOps is a combination of Development & Operations. It is a software development methodology that integrates software development functions from development to operations within the same cycle. It is a concept to remove the barriers between Dev and Ops which facilitates short and frequent delivery timelines. Accordingly to testing experts from HexaLearn, a leading quality assurance companies in India, in DevOps, the testing starts at the beginning of the development cycle. This enables continuous integration and delivery. This enables testers to perform continuous testing and monitoring to ensure that the developers have built the right application. The functionality and performance of the application are tested continuously along with development.

Software testing and quality assurance service providers follow four basic continuous processes in DevOps:

• Continuous Integration
• Continuous Delivery
• Continuous Testing
• Continuous Monitoring

According to leading quality testing service providers in India, there is a significant change in approach of quality testers in DevOps. QA testers are required to align their efforts in the DevOps cycle.

They need to ensure that their:

• Test cases are automated and achieve near 100% code coverage.
• Environments are standardized and the deployment on their QA boxes is automated.
• Pre-testing tasks, cleanups, post-testing tasks, etc. are automated and aligned with the Continuous Integration cycle.

So, what are advantages of these changes that DevOps brings in? Below are some qualities Benefits with DevOps QA process:

• Automated and continuous Quality monitoring
• Improved collaboration between development and operations
• Increased efficiency due to automated tools and standard production platforms
• Reduced failures due to continuous quality monitoring
• Reduced bug count and easier bug tracking

With all its benefits, DevOps in not easy to implement and come with its own disadvantages. Being an emerging approach, there is a lack of resources skilled in DevOps. It required strict role distribution among the team members and requires higher manpower since roles do not usually overlap.

Adopting DevOps also requires major shift in infrastructure to optimise software delivery.

DevOps is a great methodology that can reap many benefits if implemented properly. Testing service providers in India can definitely help you adopting DevOps and take your business to the next level.