Learning Management Systems: Challenges and Approaches

Having recently taken a look at the testing and QA challenges for eLearning modules, we now turn our attention to the Learning Management Systems (LMS) that underpin the digital learning process. LMSs have been widely used to deliver educational courses and training programs for over 20 years.

With broad functionality, an LMS may be used for the following purposes:

• User administration for both teachers and learners
• Learning resource document management
• Progress tracking
• Assessment and qualification management
• Data reporting

Consequently, LMS software has become a powerful tool to increase performance for education, EdTech and any digital learning business.

There are a wealth of LMS software solutions available, many being cloud-based SaaS platforms. While there are too many to list here, some of the more popular systems include: Edmodo, Litmos, Moodle, SuccessFactors, Blackboard, Cornerstone, SkillSoft, Instructure and Saba.

In this article, we’re going to break the LMS down into its most common core components and look at the testing challenges and approaches that we experience here at Zoonou. We hope to help you gain an understanding of some of the features that LMSs are comprised of, and to provide some assistance when setting up a successful test process.

Managing users, roles and courses

In most cases, LMSs will be utilised for the registration and management of teacher, learner and admin accounts. Teaching accounts can typically manage learners, course content, and reporting, while learners can access and complete course content that is assigned to them. However, each role will likely include a variety of access levels and permissions within the system.

From a testing perspective, this brings many avenues of risks. For each user level, correct permissions will need to be identified and checked, to prevent users being able to incorrectly access sensitive information or any features that may introduce problems to the learning process. For example: learners viewing course material that may result in an unfair advantage or teaching accounts accessing data relating to students outside of their ownership.

Assessments and progress tracking

An LMS will be used to track the progress of learners throughout their course engagement. Accurate metrics of progress will be presented to all relevant users of a course, enabling real-time visibility for teachers to follow a learner’s journey and provide assistance. Teachers can create and manage personalised learning modules, and learners can partake in learning activities and submit completed online assignments for review.

This introduces many factors for testing, some of which were covered in our previous article on eLearning modules. For long term courses split across large numbers of modules, teachers must always have clear and correct visibility of learner status. Any metrics displayed must be validated and should correctly track all learner progress from start to finish. For course modules, learners may be tasked with uploading additional supporting documents, which in turn requires the testing of file upload, transfer and download processes.

User correspondence

Communication is a vital tool for any digital learning experience. Learner and teacher accounts must be able to send and track messages, ideally with functionality for both users to send files, such as helpful learning resources or draft assignments, before a final marked submission.

Message sending, receiving, timestamps, file upload and download are all essential test cases.

An LMS is often made up of several combined learning technology systems, and cross-messaging between systems is imperative. For example, a learner logged in to a learning portal to access course content will send a message to their teacher which may be accessed via a separate assessor platform.

Reporting data

The reporting mechanism is a fundamental component of an LMS, often collating and reporting large volumes of data. In some cases, up to thousands of users and courses can be tracked by an LMS, for multiple businesses/schools/brands at a time.

A good LMS will provide customisation and organisation features for the data they hold, allowing information to be presented in a way that is easy to understand and analyse. Real-time data can be presented in charts, diagrams and tables, with the ability to sort and filter as per your preference. For testing, this creates many challenges, such as checking that correctly branded data is displayed, accurate data is shown and all methods of sharing and exporting this data function as expected.

In an online learning environment, the tracking of accurate and correct data is key – and LMS software must be tested and checked thoroughly ensuring that invalid or incomplete data cannot be introduced to any databases. Data inputted must also be handled with the utmost care, ensuring that personal information, course details, qualifications and progress can be reported safely, efficiently and accurately for any business needs.

If you’d like to discuss testing for eLearning, please contact us at info@zoonou.com and one of our team will get back to you. If you’d like to get in touch about anything else, please head over to our Contact page.

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