What is a Testing Space?

A Testing Space is a special kind of space used to try out a simulation before real learners ever see it. Its main purpose is to run the Automated Test Bot against your simulation: an AI bot plays the role of the learner so you can check how your character behaves, how good the feedback is, and how the simulation handles tricky situations — all without involving real people.

Why it is a separate kind of space

Cesura has two kinds of spaces:

Work spaces — for real delivery to learners. Runs use full credits, and you can share the content.
Testing spaces — for testing only. On an organization account a testing run is free on every plan: it is metered for your reports but never charged, because testing what you are building is authoring work rather than delivery. On a personal account a testing run costs 0.2 credits instead of a full credit. Either way, test as many times as you need. Content in a testing space cannot be shared — it is for testing, not delivery.

That is why, inside a testing space, a simulation shows an Automatic Testing / Open Test Page button instead of the Share and View Reports buttons you see in a work space.

Create a testing space

There are two easy ways:

From a simulation: open the simulation and choose Create Testing Space. You can Create New or Add to Existing testing space.
From the sidebar: open Testing Spaces and create one there.

Run the automated test bot

Open the testing space and find your simulation.
Click Automatic Testing (or Open Test Page).
Under Pick the test bot's persona, choose the learner the bot plays — for example Authentic (a typical practitioner), Mediocre (a learner who should land around a pass), or, under Edge-case personas, Hostile or Confused.
Click Run test with the persona's name, and the bot runs through the conversation for you.
Review the full transcript and the feedback to spot anything you want to improve, then adjust the simulation and test again.

For the full walkthrough of the test bot and its personas, see Testing your simulations with the Automated Test Bot.

Adding people to a testing space

You can invite teammates as Tester, a role that can run simulations and view the reports — handy when you want a colleague to help validate a simulation before launch.

Who can actually open the test bot

The test bot creates real simulation runs, so reaching it needs all three of these:

A platform role of Creator or above.
Tester standing on the space (or admin, owner, or you own it).
The space is a testing space.

An Instructor on an ordinary work space is not a tester and will not reach the test bot from there, whatever else they can do in that space. If a colleague cannot open it, the page tells them why.

Personas available in a testing space

Every testing space offers the same persona library, which Cesura maintains, grouped into four tiers: Grading, Engagement, Conduct and Integrity. Organizations do not keep a library of their own. If you can edit the simulation, you can edit, clone or hide a persona for that one simulation without leaving the console. See Create a test persona for your testing space.

When testing is done

Once the simulation behaves the way you want, deliver it to real learners from a regular work space, which is charged per run and can be shared. See How sharing works: spaces, activities & access levels.