The present landscape of Ed-tech is rife with ingenious solutions that positively impact a learner’s growth while paving the path for more path-breaking innovations a mile a minute.
Ed-tech now fulfills a promise that’s far reaching; beyond bridging the connectivity divide. Schools and teachers have already turned to AI solutions, digitizing the classroom experience for sustained learning. Startups are connecting professors from around the world with learners who want to upgrade their skills with a number of collaboration tools. Assessment softwares are leveraging AI to power personalized learning and offering critical insights into students’ progress based on data analytics.
Then, there is also social learning that encourages collaboration & networking between learners to solve problems together.
From online learning platforms using gamified learning with an aim to enhance productivity, behavioural science driven chatbots that take a layered approach to student communication to schools & universities using data analytics that offer a broader glimpse into students’ learning curve, the now of Ed-tech reflects collaboration, inclusivity, accessibility and the most important- uninterrupted learning. It’s a mammoth of a promise. How do you sustain it? And raise the bar simultaneously?
Key challenges that our clients face.
- Poor performance when the traffic is at its peak
The performance of your software is translated into a plurality of purposes for different students. A lot of factors need to be considered to ensure that your software fulfills its own set of purpose for its intended audience. Most of the time the visually-rich, interactive content takes longer than usual time to load especially during stress times. Availability of content in different media formats further adds to the load.
What happens when students remain logged-in for extended hours during long study sessions? How does your app handle the stress of thousands of students logging in simultaneously before an exam or when they take their assessment tests? Everyday common scenarios like these give your app a chance to shine or sink. - Pre-recorded or live, performance issues make it a lost cause for the teacher and the child
Most of the time, teachers face audio issues while capturing their pre-recorded lessons with no mechanism to know whether the students have seen them. Even during live-streaming, due to technical glitches teachers aren’t able to close distracting tabs. HarnessIng the potential of interactive audio-visual ways to teach is an attempt in vain due to substandard delivery and inefficient resources. - (Un) availability of learning content
Students log in from different time-zones, networks, bandwidths, browsers, operating systems and devices. From the most sophisticated feature to the most simplistic details, the app should perform as expected in the aforementioned variables any day, anytime. However, most of the time, the content isn’t seamlessly accessible. - Designing for accessibility but not implementing flawlessly
When you make your app accessible for all learners, ensuring that you solve their challenges is crucial for an impactful learning experience. Most of the time, apps report video captions not synced properly or some lines being missed out. Availability of different content formats for dyslexic students, such as texts, audios and graphics while the content not loading properly is another hurdle. - Content workflow (mis) management
Content workflow management is inevitable for successful interaction between the learner and the educator. Everyday, diverse interaction happens between the two parties wherein they share different forms of media back and forth. The greater the amount and richness of interactions, the greater the chances of errors. When the student uploads their homework is it readily accessible to the teacher? When the teacher resumes a lesson, does it start off from the last reading point? These minute yet significant details, make or break the user experience. - Data Security
The risk of information breach still looms and is meant to be tackled efficiently. In 2020, a major online learning platforms’ user data was breached. Is your threat intelligence smart enough to identify your current vulnerabilities that need immediate attention and prioritize tackling security gaps one by one?
The probability of your software running into these challenges and the possibility of it not disrupting your software’s performance, comes down to TESTING.
How does Testing help pave the way?
The purpose of your app is to motivate learners to learn. Poor performance does the opposite. Performance and load testing sets up a list of KPIs (Key performance indicators), based on the learning environment, nature of learner, organization and the learning arena. It tests the app’s functionality during normal load and heavy stress conditions.
Similarly, the user experience hinges hard on compatibility testing. To ensure that your live streaming video works properly when a student moves from a high network connectivity to low network connectivity, that the layout and styling remains consistent across different networks, browsers, devices and bandwidth, amongst other cases, compatibility testing is the key.
Automated software testing is your answer to ensure effectiveness of learning methods while frequently testing new features and shortening your launch cycles.
From lesson conceptualization to lesson delivery, success of each step and performance for each stakeholder is dependent on quality testing. Your learners deserve an uninterrupted experience for happy learning. Build it for them. Test for the best!
