Enhancing Educational Engagement through Targeted QA at Scholastic

Scholastic is an EdTech platform that transforms traditional homework into interactive games for elementary students. The platform is designed to boost their motivation and engagement and utilizes innovative teaching methodologies to make learning both fun and effective. 

Before the implementation of comprehensive testing strategies, Scholastic faced several challenges. The platform was operational but suffered from occasional performance issues, user interface inconsistencies across devices, and a lack of student engagement, often attributed to technical glitches and non-intuitive gameplay elements. 

We provided two QAs who initially conducted manual testing for this project to understand the core functionalities and user interactions. As the project progressed, they shifted towards automated and API testing to ensure more robust and efficient quality assurance processes. 

Scholastic utilized a blend of advanced technologies and methodologies to address these challenges: 

• Playwright + JS for automated browser testing to ensure interface consistency. 
• Appium for comprehensive mobile application testing. 
• Postman for API testing, ensuring reliable backend services. 
• Jenkins for continuous integration, facilitating ongoing development and immediate testing. 
• Slack and JIRA are integrated to facilitate real-time communication and efficient issue tracking. 

A significant QA-specific feature introduced was the implementation of a dynamic testing dashboard. This dashboard provides real-time insights into testing progress, bug statistics, and test coverage for both web and mobile applications. It became an essential tool for the project managers and QA team to actively monitor quality metrics and make informed decisions quickly. 

The focused improvements in QA processes led to significant platform enhancements: 

• Created over 300 test cases and generated over 150 bug reports, leading to comprehensive coverage and issue resolution. 
• 75% decrease in bug reports over six months reflects a more stable and reliable platform. 
• 80% of teachers reported higher student engagement, attributing this to smoother gameplay and more intuitive interactions. 
• Significant improvement in user satisfaction as indicated by surveys from students and educators.