Testing Times: the pain of e-learning compatibility

You’ve built a kick-ass online course that looks amazing. It runs perfectly on your MacBook, your Android mobile and the Chromebook your client insists on using. You feel like a winner, you’re just about to send over the final invoice and then, an email from the client hits your inbox. “It doesn’t work on my Mum’s Nokia.”

Well, of course it doesn’t run on their Mum’s Nokia. Did they expect it to? Apparently so.

Demand for online learning continues to grow and with the explosion of devices over the years, there’s now an expectation that all courses will run on every bit of tech going. There’s a perception that an online course functions like a website, so that if you can read BBC news on an iPad, a Playstation and a Samsung Galaxy Watch, then surely you can access your Food Hygiene course through those same screens. You’re reading this screaming, “But it doesn’t work like that!” And you’re right but that’s because you’re a clued-up e-learning pro who know’s their stuff, not one of those mere mortals who find TikTok a good use of time.

But if you’re so great, then why has your client’s Mum’s Nokia thrown your entire project off course at the final testing stage? It’s time to talk about scoping and client expectations when it comes to system compatibility.

Scoping

You’ve heard the word. You know that somewhere between reading the client’s vague brief, getting them to sign the contract and actually starting to develop their e-learning, you need to scope the project. The devil is in the details and among the numerous areas that you need to nail down in a project, a biggie is the need to specify exactly what technology the final product needs to be compatible with. A good starting point is to look at the client’s other content - are they running it on an LMS or a website? Is it SCORM? Build to whatever works for the client. If that’s a Nokia phone, then you’ve either got some work to do or you can break out your “Client Expectations” playbook.

Client Expectations

You can’t put a DVD in a VCR. You can’t play an XBOX game on a Sega Megadrive. And for some reason, if I download my holiday videos from Google Photos, I can’t edit them on iMovie on my MacBook, even though it used to work a few months ago. Not every piece of tech is compatible with every other piece of tech and the goalposts are changing all the time - that’s just life in 2024. So explain this concept to your client at the start and tell them that you will test compatibility across the most popular and widely-used systems and browsers, such as Windows, macOS, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.

If you’re building a course within a particular Learning Management System, like Moodle, then you can be pretty confident it’s going to work within that LMS. Your testing here will be more on feature/functionality, rather than compatibility. Creating a course as a SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) is a pretty safe bet too but doesn’t guarantee a flawless experience across all platforms, so again, you need to set client expectations around this from the start.

Responsive Design

Many course authoring tools are now set up to create responsive courses that adapt to different screen sizes with breakpoints, meaning you get a fairly good experience across devices. Still not sure about an old Nokia though. Get to know your authoring software and find out what it can and can’t do.

Accessibility

As a general rule, an all-singing, all-dancing, fully interactive online course probably isn’t the most accessible piece of learning out there for deaf and / or blind users. More and more learning providers are now bringing in accessibility testing (usually after the course is built, which is helpful) and blowing holes in online courses and budgets at the eleventh hour. So again, make sure any accessibility requirements are specified at the start of the project, so you know exactly what you’re building and testing for.

Testing e-learning courses always throws up issues, whether it’s user experience or just random glitches; that’s why we test. What shouldn’t be biting you in the arse at the testing stage is tech compatibility. Between your mastery of your course-building tools and a lockeddown client spec that highlights what systems the learning needs to work on, you should be able to develop e-learning that works across all the platforms that matter.

Nokia had its time and although Snake remains one of the greatest games ever made, a 3310 is never going to run an explorable 360° environment with branching storylines and learning outcome assessments - sorry to all the client mums out there.