With the rise in Bring Your Own Device environments and public-facing training, I'm wondering if people are finding an increased need for things like cross-platform compatibility tests and LMS load-testing before launch. There's nothing worse than a server that melts down on launch day or finding out that a large part of your audience can't use your elearning. What tools are you using to support your manual and automated technical testing? How do you make sure everything works when you go live?
A while back, I had looked into testing options and device libraries to deal with the BYOD 'mess'. These two here looked promising to me (both provide free trials):
Load-testing on the other hand is a much more complicated issue - it all depends on the set of technologies of your production environment. As such, it should be done using either a) the load-testing tool(s) designated by your LMS vendor or b) tools that you know are compatible with your platform. I'm sorry I can't be more specific, this all depends on your environment. Having said that, one tool I tend to use when load-testing regardless of platform, is Selenium.
Thanks Michael and Alex, those are great suggestions! I've looked at a few tools (like Selenium-based testing with Sauce Labs), but I wondered if other elearning companies had found other (and maybe elearning-centric) options. I also wondered if automated testing is being more widely adopted.
Alex, I'm curious about your feedback on load testing. Have you seen any LMS vendors publish recommendations for load testing tools and practices? I'd love to take a look at something like that.
It really depends on the vendor. Some of them (even high profile one's) prefer to rely on 'clever marketing' rather than cold hard facts.
The LMS project I used to participate in and recommend ( and still do, just not as an active contributor anymore) contained several examples and use cases for performing load-testing on the production machines, on the official documentation. In that particular case, the load testing tool of choice was Jmeter (http://jmeter.apache.org). That's because the webapp ran under Java/Apache/Tomcat.
Thanks again, Alex. I'll do some more digging; I'm also interested in testing from multiple regions and platforms rather than just simulated testing on the same network.
5 Replies
A while back, I had looked into testing options and device libraries to deal with the BYOD 'mess'. These two here looked promising to me (both provide free trials):
1. http://deviceanywhere.com/
2. http://www.perfectomobile.com/
Hi Ryan,
I would add Browserstack and Genymotion to the list Michael provided above.
Load-testing on the other hand is a much more complicated issue - it all depends on the set of technologies of your production environment. As such, it should be done using either a) the load-testing tool(s) designated by your LMS vendor or b) tools that you know are compatible with your platform. I'm sorry I can't be more specific, this all depends on your environment. Having said that, one tool I tend to use when load-testing regardless of platform, is Selenium.
Hope this helps,
Alex
Thanks Michael and Alex, those are great suggestions! I've looked at a few tools (like Selenium-based testing with Sauce Labs), but I wondered if other elearning companies had found other (and maybe elearning-centric) options. I also wondered if automated testing is being more widely adopted.
Alex, I'm curious about your feedback on load testing. Have you seen any LMS vendors publish recommendations for load testing tools and practices? I'd love to take a look at something like that.
It really depends on the vendor. Some of them (even high profile one's) prefer to rely on 'clever marketing' rather than cold hard facts.
The LMS project I used to participate in and recommend ( and still do, just not as an active contributor anymore) contained several examples and use cases for performing load-testing on the production machines, on the official documentation. In that particular case, the load testing tool of choice was Jmeter (http://jmeter.apache.org). That's because the webapp ran under Java/Apache/Tomcat.
Chances are, your base setup is different.
Hope this helps,
Alex
Thanks again, Alex. I'll do some more digging; I'm also interested in testing from multiple regions and platforms rather than just simulated testing on the same network.
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