Hello everyone 
Iām a junior software tester in a small company where I do basic manual testing. I would love to educate myself so Iām wondering where to take good and valuable online courses?
I used to learn on Udemy but Iām having a hard time finding a quality course.
Also, do you have any recommendations on what topic to start to educate myself? Iām thinking maybe AI toolsā¦
Thank you for your time and wish you all a wonderful day 
Hi,
I wanted to share my journey and how I started to educate myself and to inspire you in maybe considering these topics as well.
My first target when joining this profession was to skill myself into thinking in terms of experiments, explorations, risk-based testing, deep-testing and find as many problems in the product/system as I can, while learning about it. I challenged myself in finding problems that other testers missed (itās hard). I did that besides my regular tasks assigned to me by the manager (which I was usually done with in a few hours as they were generally quick/mindless/boring). I consistently ignored or very quickly āmarked as doneā scripted test-cases being pushed onto me as I didnāt find value in those. I worked overtime, I studied at home during evenings and weekends to accomplish this over 3 years.
Then my second goal was to learn what testing truly is, so I looked into, found out and learned about various methodologies and schools of testing. I tried to find meaning and purpose in each of those. Where do they fit, why are they done. How are they useful and wasteful? Do some courses/trainings/classes in each of those, or study alone. (see Cem Kaner schools of testing).
Then I learned about the business domain. I couldnāt in good conscience do good testing if I didnāt know the customers desires or complaints, what drives the company value, how are the competitor companies and products going, how is the company gaining contracts/profits, whatās the overall internal company process across departments/products, whatās the marketing/sales focusing on in the next year. This helped into focusing testing on what really matters: business value. This also reduces wasteful testing.
Then I learned about how to work across several teams/products while quickly bringing the right information of value to them. Mostly discussed in the Rapid Software Testing.
Then I got an interest in development and infrastructure technical stacks, and tool-sets for testers. I tried to get skilled into being aware, proactive and interactive and quickly start testing with any developer at any time.
ā¦this took about 10 years for me. And I felt like I was still barely starting to understand.
Iād recommend to learn how to think for yourself before getting someone or something else to do the thinking for you. Youāll have no idea what youād missing, if what youāre following makes sense.
Well I am currently learning in Udemy from this guy āRahul Shettyā. He makes good course and relativelly cheap, but well there are some other guys that are also good I guess. But I thing Udemy is cool. About want to learn I am a little in the same boat but I will give you some clues based on a particular topic:
Is good when whatever the course you take or learning be able to use the aforementioned tools with other tool for CI/CD pipelines.
Also,it is a good idea that whatever you are learning create small projects that you can store in your github. Then you can also share that in your linkedin or CV.
Hope this help.
There are different kinds of upskilling. It depends in which particular area you want to upskill yourselves. As you said, you have experience in manual testing, so if you want to explore topics in the same, there are a lot of things from testing strategies, test heauristics, test planning, black box testing technique, test cases, etc.
If you want to switch to automation, then there are different kinds of automation, like API, Mobile, and UI. Choose the one that you like most and choose any programming language like C#, Java, Javascript, or Python.
You can Go to the website https://www.roadmap.sh and create a roadmap for your upskilling in automation.
However, if you are proficient with automation with one specific area like UI, Mobile, or API, then the remaining will be a bit easy. Framework setup is similar in all these 3 automation.
Explore each programming language, and from a beginnerās point of view, Python is a bit easy.
Start with the basics of programming language and learn up to OOPS, then start with the basics of web automation. Once you are familiar with all the operations and actions on the application, you can start with automation.
Time for upskilling can vary depending on your learning speed and how much you are willing to dedicate.
The majority of the content is focused on web automation with Java and Selenium, so you can easily find lots of free and paid resources on that.
Meanwhile, on sidenote, you can also keep exploring AI tools for different use cases like test cases, test data, etc.
Lastl,y you can also explore AI agents for UI automation. Iām not sure how much current ai agents are capable of UI automation but yeah people out there are working on UI automation and you can check them too.
So many ways to educate yourself nowadays. You can find everything now from internet, especially Google.
You can educate from valid and reputable sources, as example you try ISTQB to know better about fundamental of testing or maybe you want to take certification. You can also find courses from other resources that reputable and credible ex : coursera or even from MoT they have testing certification also.
From communities or youtube, just knowing first what you wan to do or what you want to find to be educated. Do you want to educate from documentation or theory about testing, or just want to practice.
Explore with AI also will help you but i suggest do it later when you already enough educated with basic things and know to implement it. May this ideas will help you. 
Personally Iād also recommend AWS and Azure training/certification (GCP if youāre feeling enthusiastic). Even just knowing your way round the various cloud technologies will serve you well when youāre in a meeting and someone talks about creating a durable function and asks you how you would test it.
Both AWS and Azure have a vast wealth of training materials and recognised certifications that I think are very valuable in todayās market. The training is free and high quality, you do have to pay for certification but itās not expensive.
Not gonna lie, Iāve done all 3 of the Ministry of Testing certificates and I think they have some of the best content Iāve seen for certificates. Far more āreal worldā than most of the others I have done and includes some great āhands-onā worksheets too.
The Ministry of Testing? 
We publish content daily: articles, testing trends, curated news.
We host ondemand courses, a new one on Continuous Quality coming out next week.
We have the largest resource for software testing knowledge in the form of talks, software testing tools, community created glossary.
We have certifications, literally built with the community.
We learn in community, via places like this forum and our Slack.
Hey @matea,
In testing, especially when youāre just starting out, curiosity is the light that guides you forward. It nudges you to ask questions, to dig deeper, to never settle for surface-level answers. That instinct alone puts you ahead of the game.
Now, if youāre ready to grow beyond basic testing and really invest in yourself, Iād ask you without hesitation to really explore the Ministry of Testing platform.
But to be honest, itās not just a platform with videos and lessons. Itās a living, breathing ecosystem for testers like you. A global community built for testers, by testers.
Iāve personally seen what it can do. For beginners. For experts. For everyone in between. Checkout my profile to get an idea. Rahul Parwal | parwalrahul | Ministry of Testing
So why does it work so well?
Because it meets you where you are at your career stage and then lifts you higher from there.
Youāll discover curated learning paths. Not just a random collection of tutorials, but focused, intentional journeys through topics like automation, AI, exploratory testing, systems thinking, etc.
Youāll attend live events. MiniConfs. Talks with real experts. Free. Insightful. Eye-opening. I rely on their testing trends to know where the field is going and how I can lead the way.
But hereās the real magic of this community: the people.
Ask a question, and you wonāt just get one answer. Youāll spark a conversation like we are doing right now. Youāll join a group of voices, all adding their own notes. The community is welcoming. Generous. Brilliant. And those conversations? Theyāll teach you more than any lecture or course ever could.
As you participate, you build. A living portfolio-like this. Not just a list of certifications, but a presence that grows every time you write a post, earn a badge, or speak at an event. Youāll stop wondering how to get noticed. Youāll be noticed.
One last thing. Subscribe to their newsletter. Itās a sharp, consistent stream of updates, events, curated resources, and thought-provoking ideas.
All the best, and happy to answer any follow-up questions.
Rahul
Hi Matea,
Great to have you on the MOT club. Itās a good start to your journey in the testing craft by asking the community here. Iād probably suggest the following course that helps you get started.
The article Iāve included below has some real gems for you to start with.
Also Iād point you to the MoT Software Testing Essentials Certificate | Ministry of Testing as a good point of investment into your career.
I still think you shouldnāt ask recommendations online on what to learn. I mean itās okay to do it and youāll get good suggestions for sure BUT they might not be applicable for you.
It really depends on your goals here, as a junior software tester, I can imagine you want to grow as fast as possible and be relevant in your domain. So what I would suggest here is to look around you. Check some vacancies and see whatās required for new positions (you donāt even have to swap companies) but youāll see whatās relevant to your country/city etc.
A lot of people would say āSeleniumā to me in the past, but here in Belgium Selenium is kind of dead. So learning that would not be beneficial to me. If you see where Iām going?
So look around you and you might see " API Testing with Postman or Bruno" as a requirement and then search google on that content.
Then find a master in the content so that person can coach you.
Besides that itās also quite nice to follow online platforms like MoT 
Youāll get emails/notifications about new things and slowly/passively youāll learn more and more besides to hard focus stuff.
Welcome!
For inspiration, and learning things I donāt know I donāt know, Iāve learned a monumental amount from being an MoT Professional member, and watching years of talks from TestBash. There is such a rich tapestry of learning from those talks, itās unmatched in any one place.
I also have done a lot of very practical learning for automation over on the free Test Automation University, TAU.
More recently, MoT have also introduced certificates, in automation and testing essentials. Iāve been contributing to the latter, so Iām biased, but genuinely there is great content on there.
Those are great questions, matea! This is exactly how i started myself. And on top of that: I was the only tester in my little company, so I could not even ask other testers for advice and instead was working closely with the developers. Which is not a bad thing. But eventually comes a time to embrace the testing role and maybe even push back against what devs think is important to test
You have already found the best place to start your journey We are so fortunate to have the Ministry of Testing community! Great to ask for advice here. You will probably get more advice than you can handle because this community is so varied and we work in all sorts of places! Not all will apply to you. So like was said before: I advice to take it from where you are now. What do you need to do most in your job? What do you want to improve on? Or maybe even: which jobs are the most boring? Because those are a good place to start automating and learn better (faster) ways to do them.
I would not do a random online course, i would start with small improvements. And there are tons of little articles and advice on the MoT website, not just in the Club. But you did not say exactly where in your testing journey you are. Maybe you have already done the small improvements and want to find a way to progress in your career. In which case, I would check out the certifications here too. They are a larger commitment (and investment in terms of time and money) but they are so comprehensive and not only will you learn from the bottom up how to do testing, but you will even get a certificate in the end which can help you when looking for work or negotiating a salary.
I have not done any of the courses on MoT but am planning to negotiate some time off work to do so. I can therefore not yet vouch for the quality personally. But I can say that i have met a number of people in the community who have contributed modules and content to these courses and they are all excellent.
But yeah, for starters, I would check out the learning page here on MoT. And also the testing trends because that will give you an insight about what is āhotā right now in the testing world. But donāt jump on something because it is a trend, always ask: what is the investment in time to learn this and how will it improve my day to day work. Only you know the answers to that.
And feel free to post again if you have more specific questions about particular topics!
Hey, welcome to testing! MoT has a course which could be exactly what youāre looking for: MoT Software Testing Essentials Certificate | Ministry of Testing It brings together knowledge from over 50 reputable testers in the community (disclosure: Iām one of them) and focusses on practical learnings, rather than strict or old-fashioned definitions.
If youāre interested in AI, then @parwalrahul 's Prompting for Testers course might also be interesting for you: Prompting for Testers | Ministry of Testing
I think it really depends on what you want to learn and why. For example, depending on what type of testing you are currently doing do you want to expand your current skills in exploratory testing, accessibility testing etc.?
The ministry of testing can certainly help whatever subject you choose and generally from a basic level to intermediate and beyond. Folks have mentioned certificates and on demand courses but Iād start by finding two or three areas to start with.
I created a table when I first started mapping out areas I could learn, where and how which might help you get started. Good luck with your learning.
Hi everyone,
Iām so grateful for your answers that really helped me to think about my next step - what to learn. I realized that itās good to follow my companyās needs and tools and to grow in that fields, for now.
Where am I right now: I have ISTQB foundation certificate. I do manual testing for basic websites and applications. I have basic knowledge but I think I need more practice and to decide what test strategies to improve.
Also, thanks to everyone who recommend MoT certificates, they look powerful, Iām looking for a better time for that. I sure will explore articles, trends, news.. Thereās so much that itās hard to find the beginning 
And thanks for advices to build on existing knowledge instead of new things, Iāll practice that, too.
I want to learn how to write testing documentation in a better way.
So, what test strategies do you love the most? Which strategy are you most interested in testing?