Elearning Testing from a Learner’s Perspective

Will your learners be taking your next online course from a desktop computer? Will they be taking it on a laptop or tablet or some other handheld device? Elearning testing must match the environment that the learner will experience.

When creating eLearning modules and courses, it’s imperative to validate the look, feel, and function of the courses before they are in the hands of your client, SMEs, and learners. If you use Storyline or Rise, Articulate 360 provides an easy and convenient way to do this through preview mode while in development and publishing to Review 360. Using Review 360 allows you to review Rise modules and Storyline courses with a click of a button.

You’ve now previewed each page as you built it and it looks great! But is this approach enough to show you how a learner will experience your module?

Publish or Preview to Test Elearning

Most rapid elearning development tools give you a quick way to test your elearning without fully publishing. This is sort of a preview that lets you view it. There are a couple of dangers in doing this:

Preview is not the same as publish. Most developers will tell you that you want to test in as realistic environment as possible to find issues.
If you are in a preview mode you usually have to exit that mode to make edits. This is a time suck. We believe in efficiency and if you can have your published course playing in one window and your development tool in another, you can rapidly make edits.

When it comes to elearning testing in Articulate 360 (or any authoring program, for that matter), our experience tells us that publishing is the best way to view your eLearning courses as the learner would view them. Whether you export the course as Web file and upload it to WordPress, or export to LMS and test it in your personal (or better yet, the customer’s) LMS, you will view the most authentic form of the course and catch any lingering bugs that you may not have seen in preview mode or Review.

How to Test Elearning Like a Learner

At Endurance Learning, we recently had a customer that required a Rise course that could be accessed on desktop as well as seamlessly be used on tablets and mobile devices, without taking away from the look and feel of the course. Rise has a preview mode for mobile devices, and we used that to help guide us during development.

The course looked great on all platforms via preview mode in Articulate Rise. Once the course was uploaded to the web for customer review on mobile, however, the customer was seeing an array of issues we couldn’t see in preview mode or in Review 360. We had assumed the customer would see exactly what we were seeing.

You know what they say when you assume…

Elearning Testing with Only One Device

To begin troubleshooting, we viewed the course on our personal phones, which gave us the learner experience, but we hadn’t thought much about the different operating systems (iOS, Android, etc.). Each operating system seemed to alter small details of the course functions.

We decided to lean on our software development experience and use a product called BrowserStack (https://www.browserstack.com/).

elearning testing using Browserstack — *Example of accessing a website on an iPhone using Browserstack.*

BrowserStack made it incredibly simple for us to view the eLearning course via the web on any (and I mean any) combination of desktops browsers or mobile devices and browsers, LIVE! There are many examples of mobile device simulators, but we had already experienced that in the Articulate 360 suite. BrowserStack connects you to live devices, not simulators.

BrowserStack allowed us to see what our customer was experiencing so we could update the course effectively. We tested the course on multiple devices within each operating system and on various browsers. This approach helped us quickly narrow down where issues were and what features of Rise were (or weren’t) functioning as expected on all devices.

Other Options for Elearning Testing

There is no one answer to validating and testing your elearning modules. As eLearning developers who are trying to focus the learner’s energy on the module’s objective, it is critically important to test on various platforms that are as close to what the learner will be using. Without this it is hard to say that you have considered the true learner experience. BrowserStack is one product that has enabled our company to test our courses from the learner’s seat.

Lindsay Garcia

Lindsay Garcia is an Instructional Designer at SCS Global Services. Previously, she was the Creative Services Manager at Endurance Learning, where she combined her understanding of visual design with a deep understanding of instructional design to create highly effective e-learning, videos, and related materials.
During her time at Endurance Learning, Lindsay developed or contributed to hundreds of e-learning modules deployed around the globe. She created a full rebrand for all instructional materials for NIEER SESEBA, which included designing the template and visuals for ten e-learning modules and applying a new style to the facilitator-led training materials.
Lindsay is also experienced in developing engaging videos using Powtoon, Vyond, and Camtasia.
Lindsay holds an MA in Instructional Design and Technology from the American College of Education.

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