Everything you need to know about STeP, the learning model, course access, certificates, tools, and enrollment.
STeP — Software Testing eLearning Portal — is a learning path for people who test software.
It is designed for experienced practitioners watching AI reshape the skills they built their careers on, and for learners who are starting out and want to learn testing in an AI-native way from day one.
STeP is not a course you finish once. It is a foundation, plus two paths forward from there.
You can take it in whichever mode fits how you learn:
learn at your own speed with no fixed schedule.
follow a set schedule with live coaching support alongside the material.
Every learner starts with the same foundation:
The PSTE course.
Covers both testing with AI and testing AI systems.
This is where the path splits. You can take API Testing, Test Automation Engineering, or both, in whichever order fits what you are building toward.
All four courses together make up:
Not as an absolute requirement, but knowing how to code helps.
STeP is built for testers who will be utilizing agentic and AI-assisted test automation. It is not designed for people becoming purely test automation engineers or SDETs building test automation at scale.
You will be "light on coding" throughout. The goal is that you are capable of working alongside AI tools with judgment, not that you are writing production automation code yourself.
If you want a head start, Introduction to Programming for Testers is on the roadmap.
In the meantime, see recommended before you start for interim resources.
Hung has spent decades as a tester, teacher, and company builder.
His background includes LogiGear, co-founding AST, teaching at UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz Extension, and building Mettatonic Corporation and Shade of Hue, STeP's operator.
A word about the voice you will hear in every STeP course.
The lecture narration in this course is AI voice.
We want to be upfront about this, rather than leave you wondering or discovering it partway through.
Many of you have told us it sounds robotic, and that you would rather hear a real person than a synthetic one. We have read every note, and we are not brushing it aside. It is a real reaction, and you are not wrong to have it.
We want to walk you through why we are building this way anyway, because we think you deserve the reasoning, not just the decision.
This is Vibe Teaching: an AI-assisted way of building and delivering this course, chosen deliberately.
Most courses treat learning as a destination. An instructor records something polished, and by the time it is edited and published, the tools it teaches have already moved on. In software testing today, that gap costs you something real.
When a major framework changes, we would rather catch up with this course in days than wait for months or a new semester.
The second reason matters even more: this course teaches you how to work with AI — not for it or against it. If we asked you to do that while creating every lecture slowly and manually ourselves, we would be asking you to practice something we were not willing to model.
Vibe Teaching means doing what we teach, in front of you, as we go.
So yes, the voice will sound different than what you are used to. We are not asking you to love that. We are asking you to work with it, direct it, question it, and catch what it misses.
That is the same muscle you will need with any AI tool from here forward, and it is a big part of what it means to become an AI-Native Testing Practitioner.
We are building this together, and we wanted you to hear the "why" straight from us.
Because a certificate is a snapshot.
It is accurate the day you earn it, and it starts going stale from there — especially in a field moving as fast as AI.
STeP is built to keep changing as the profession does, instead of locking a curriculum in place and calling it finished.
Course content updates as tools, frameworks, and practices change.
That is the point of building the course through an AI-assisted production process.
If a major testing framework changes, the goal is to reflect that in days, not wait for a new semester-style release cycle.
Yes.
You receive either:
if you register through AST.
if you register directly through SOH.
Yes, through the AST partnership and registration through AST.
Yes, if you are an AST member.
Registering through AST gets you a discount, along with the AST-SOH joint Certificate credential and AST CEU/PDH credits.
Registering directly through SOH gets you the SOH Certificate at standard pricing.
Timing and format also differ by path:
AST runs its own cohort schedule, and SOH runs its own separately.
AST's cohort program is not published or distributed on the SOH site. If you are looking for AST's cohort dates, that is handled through AST directly, not through shadeofhue.com.
A certification exam is a snapshot.
It is accurate the day you earn it, and it starts going out of date from there — especially in a field moving as fast as AI-assisted testing.
The AST-SOH joint Certificate and SOH Certificate work differently. They are tied to a curriculum that keeps updating as tools and practices change, not a fixed syllabus.
That is why we frame STeP as a journey, not a destination. The certificate reflects a living body of course work, not a one-time exam result.
PromptVault lets you save a prompt with one instruction and run it again with one click.
It comes pre-loaded with prompts drawn directly from the STeP curriculum.
QA Voice Coach is AI-powered practice for defending your findings and communicating out loud.
That includes things like defending a timeline, escalating a blocker, and receiving coaching feedback.
Yes.
Daily Testing — AI in Testing Daily — is a free community service, not a course or paid product.
It is a daily podcast and newsletter for software testing practitioners and leaders, narrated by an AI twin of Hung's voice.
Content alternates between two tracks:
Monday and Thursday. Covers hands-on guidance for testing AI systems and applying AI thoughtfully in testing workflows.
Tuesday and Friday. Covers what is changing and worth paying attention to at the intersection of AI, testing, and QA-relevant technology.
It is run openly as a public learning experiment — including its mistakes — so you can get a feel for the thinking behind STeP before you ever pay for anything.
Visit daily.testingeducation.org to subscribe.
After enrollment, you will receive an email with your login credentials and onboarding instructions to get started.
Your purchase includes 12 months of access from the date of enrollment.
This applies to individual courses and to the full First STeP: AI-Native Testing Series.
During that time, you can revisit any lesson as many times as you like, and you will receive any updates we make to the course content.
As your access period gets closer to ending, we will reach out with options to continue.
Pricing is being finalized.
STeP will be priced by course and by delivery mode, with options for self-paced learning and cohort + coaching.
AST members may receive discounted pricing through AST registration.
Please check back soon or contact us for current enrollment options.
The refund and cancellation policy is currently being finalized.
For AST-registered enrollments, refunds and cancellations follow AST's own policy.
For SOH-registered enrollments, details will be published once confirmed.
A note on course narration:
Lecture audio in STeP courses is AI voice, not studio recordings; a deliberate choice, not a shortcut.
It is part of how we keep courses current when tools, frameworks, and practices change, instead of waiting on a slow production cycle to catch up.
You will hear more about the thinking behind this. We call it Vibe Teaching.
STeP FAQ