Welcome to Acronym Aunt, where we attempt to decipher the agonising acronyms in the digital learning industry. Acronyms buzz around our industry the way bees might buzz around a hive, but thankfully they have no sting. In our previous article, we explained what LMS stands for. This time, we’ll be looking at UAT, which is not used as often, but I think is pretty important nevertheless.
UAT sounds like the name of a suburban security company or maybe even a weapons-grade cough syrup. Gross.
But thankfully, it’s neither of these.
UAT stands for User Acceptance Testing and is a term often used in the software or technology industries. In simple terms, it’s the testing phase of any product, and in a digital learning space, it’s the step that goes hand-in-hand with QA (that’s Quality Assurance – more on that in a later Acronym Aunt post!).
This is when you test how you’ve done at creating your product. The data from a UAT allows you to see how well your average user has read the media and content and if the overall experience is positive and has achieved the goals set out.
Depending on your business, UATs can include pilot groups, where public individuals are paid to test your product and alert you to any problem areas, demonstrate return on investment, and can be used to predict the efficacy of the final learning solution deployment.
A UAT could be conducted by a designated individual inside your organisation who will analyse and collect data to be conveyed back to the developers. It could be one phase or many phases; a long-term phase or a short-term phase… but I’m sure you get the idea.
UAT is always needed before any deployment. Factors like audience size, context, time, learning environment, learning barriers and obviously the all-important budget might affect the depth of the UAT, but a UAT is always necessary.
Did this help? Drop us a comment if you have anything to add, we’d love to hear from you.
Author: Simon Pienaar