Improve your Testing Acumen with these Online QA Courses

To say that quality assurance (QA) is a passion of ours would be like saying that a sailor’s passion is the sea. Of course, we care about QA. It is not only about QA from a business goals aspect either it is about the community, and about continuous learning and growth via QA courses that help teams become the best testers and team members that they can be.

The idea of wanting to deliver quality products goes back for thousands of years. To the building of the pyramids even. QA, as we begin to know it, starts with guilds in the Middle-Ages. When the guilds disappeared in the 19th century it was the lessons learned during the Industrial Revolution that leads us to the world of QA today.

What is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the QA community is the interest in bettering one’s skills and how people help each other out. Nowhere is this more apparent in the amazing number of online QA courses that are available to help developers and QA take their skills to the next level.

Where to find QA tutorials online

In preparing this handy list of tutorials we looked at three main places that are well known and respected for the depth and comprehensiveness of their QA courses.

Linkedin Learning – A subsidiary of LinkedIn and owned by Microsoft, it started 1995 as Lynda.com By 2004 it had 100 online courses. In 2015 it was purchased by Linkedin, which in turn was acquired by Microsoft in 2016.

Coursera – Founded in 2012 by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller of Stanford, Coursera offers open online QA courses and others that include subjects like engineering, data science, computer science, business, and may more.

Applitools Test Automation University – Applitools created TAU to help teach best practices for test automation as part of the app development process. Since then they have added many classes and with the growth of that popularity, they added learning paths.

So let’s dig in shall we?

Test Automation Foundations  

As products are tested to make sure they work, automated testing uses scripts and frameworks like Selenium. Automated testing saves huge amounts of time and is one of the main aspects of CICD and Agile development. For anyone who works in DevOps IT or QA understanding the basics of test automation is essential. This course covers different implementation strategies and the foundations of test automation as the title reveals. Led by QA engineer Meaghan Lewis, she explains the different types of tests, choosing the right tools for you, and test automation project planning and execution. Also covered in these QA  courses are the strategies to implement that will help you plan and maintain your automated testing over time.

Recommended for: Software Testers, Software Developers, and Quality Assurance Testers.

Learning Selenium

Also Lead by Microsoft’s Meaghan Lewis this tutorial is centered on one of the most popular web app testing frameworks around, Selenium. QA engineers that learn and use Selenium are able to write and automate tests using any number of browsers and OSes without needing a special scripting language. New users who want to learn Selenium will benefit from this course as they learn test writing best practices and how to organize scalable test suites. You will also learn about the test pyramid paradigm. It helps understand the ideal way to balance unit, integration, and UI testing.

Recommended for: Software Tester, Software Developer, and Quality Assurance Tester

Programming Foundations: Software Testing/QA

Starting from the context of a software engineering project this course shows that QA can mean different things to different roles within an organization. You will learn QA practices and different methods of QA in testing. The course also shows how QA fits into the larger SDLC. You will learn about which areas to focus testing on, as well as what to continuously monitor in order to drive app improvements. Once completed you will be able to analyze your work better and see how it fits together into the larger scheme of testing and development.

Recommended for: Software Tester, Software Developer, and Quality Assurance Tester

Insights on Software Quality Engineering

Since QA engineering plays an important role in the SDLC it is important to be able to ensure a great customer experience while also saving companies time and money. This course led by software QA Aaron Dolberg is full of his personal insights and cautionary tales from a life spent in software engineering and testing. Most importantly you will learn about getting started in QA, and how that fits into both large and small companies. He also covers how QA has changed as Agile development has grown.

Recommended for: Software Tester, Software Developer, Student, and Quality Assurance Tester

Software Testing Foundations: Testing throughout the SDLC

Showing how an app moves from the idea stage until the release is the purpose of the Software Development Livecycle. In terms of managing your SDLC, you can use different methodologies like Agile and Waterfall. Testing then becomes the key milestone in each phase. This course helps Quality teams understand their role in the SDLC while also grasping strategies that come down from management. The main point is to mitigate the challenges of testing. Mike Fine the instructor shows different approaches to help manage your software project including best practices and where testing slots into each step.

Recommended for: Software Tester, Software Developer, and Quality Assurance Tester

Introduction to Software Testing

This course from the University of Minnesota gives participants a great understanding of the fundamentals and principals of software testing. This includes creating test cases and running them via an automated testing tool. Also important is the ability to recognize a good test with its input data and the expected outcomes.

Recommended for: Software Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Test Automation Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Software Developer, Programmer, Computer Enthusiast.

Web and Mobile Testing with Selenium 

Modern Web and mobile apps connect with users through built-in touchpoints and interfaces. Users interact with these apps using the UI and the quality of those UIs will give users the perception of software quality. This course takes participants through prioritizing testing efforts and automating test execution. The course also covers testing web and mobile platforms along with the use of Selenium as a framework for automating testing. Participants will build a foundation in the principals of web and mobile app testing along with the ability to use continuous testing frameworks to automate their test runs.

Recommended for: Software Tester, Software Developer, and Quality Assurance Tester

Software Development Processes 

Web and mobile apps are essential to modern life. Developing and testing apps is growing with new technological advancements and better test automation. The software industry is learning as a result some better ways to build software and apps. These QA courses will give participants an overview of how software development works. The course takes a look at the processes used with a breakdown of some industry standards. Listed alongside are the pros and cons of each.

Recommended for: Software Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Test Automation Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Software Developer, Programmer, Computer Enthusiast.

Agile with Atlassian Jira

With Agile development teams plan and prepare with an incremental approach. This means that each agile team and project use their own custom agile methods. The course covers common agile principles and practices and will participants a set of tools they can bring to any agile team. Covering agile and lean principals alongside kanban and scrum methods. The main tool used is the Atlassian Jira Software Cloud. Classic and next-gen Jira projects are both covered.

Recommended for: Product owner, Scrum Master, Project manager, Testing Manager

 Software Development Processes and Methodologies

This course gives students an overview of how software teams work and what processes they use. The course also covers industry-standard methodologies with their pros and cons. The result will be that you will be able to converse about any software development process.

Recommended for: Software developer, Software tester

Mobile Automation with Appium in JavaScript

This course starts by looking at setup and dependencies. After that Appium installation and dependencies which include APKs capabilities and a tutorial about setting up your first Appium project. Next, the course covers element interactions and commands followed by sessions, screen orientation, and how to take screenshots. Basically, everything a tester would need to know about Appium and JavaScript.

Recommended for: Software Tester, Software Developer, and Quality Assurance Tester

Test Automation in DevOps

Lisa Crispin designed this  QA course to give participants guidance in learning how to use test automation on a team level. The goal is to be able to deliver business value by releasing high-quality apps. Test automation and continuous delivery is the most effective way to deliver small code changes to production. The course covers basic DevOps concepts and terms, as well as continuous delivery and deployment.

Recommended for: Software Tester, Software Developer, and Quality Assurance Tester

Tools and Techniques for Performance and Load Testing

Web and mobile applications must be fast and reliable. That is why it is so important to also test performance and load. In this course, participants will learn tools and techniques that will help make your apps more successful. Included is a discussion about what performance and load testing are. Then the course will cover tools for performance and load testing along with how to design the tests.

Recommended for: Software Tester, Software Developer, and Quality Assurance Tester

Codeless Test Automation with Selenium IDE

Instructor Dave Haeffner leads this course on the subject of codeless automation. Since Selenium IDE has been redesigned it is time to show how to use the tool more effectively. The course includes discussions about codeless automation and how to start managing your project.

Recommended for: Software Tester, Software Developer, and Quality Assurance Tester

The Whole Team Approach to Continuous Testing

Collaboration with developers and implementing automated and continuous testing is essential in releasing high-quality web and mobile apps. This course starts with a look at continuous testing. The course is different than most in that it looks at a team level explanation. Another important piece of the course is the discussion of the context and trying things out before knowing exactly what works.

Recommended for: Software Tester, Software Developer, and Quality Assurance Tester

To conclude, there seems to be no end to the number of helpful QA courses and videos aimed at helping people both do their jobs better and communicate within their organizations. What we have shown you above are just a few that are well suited for QA professionals and by extension developers and test engineers. Naturally, there are more so be sure to check out Coursera, Test Automation University, and LinkedinLearning for more. Finally, if you need access to browsers or devices for your QA testing than look no further than here.

Jonny Steiner – Content Manager