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What is Student Preview?
As an instructor, you want to be confident that your course is well-designed and functions as intended - before your students see it. By default, content added to a course is set to be hidden from student view. Before making your course accessible to students, it's a good best practice to enter into Student Preview to review course content and determine if availability to materials/assessments has been set correctly. If needed, the Batch Edit feature can be used to change the availability to content items in mass.
With student preview, you can experience the course exactly as your students do and make adjustments needed to ensure accessibility.
Entering into Student Preview Mode
- To access the Student Preview, click on the icon in the upper right corner of the course. This action creates a student account, called the Preview user account and enrolls you in the current course as a student.
- At the next screen click Start Preview. You'll notice a dark grey "Student Preview" header appears at the top of your course, confirming you are in Student Preview mode. Now you can navigate the course to review content or complete course activities as a student.
- To exit Student Preview, click the Exit button in the upper right corner of the course. When exiting, you will be given the choice to Discard or Save any preview user data generated while in preview mode (submitted assignments, test scores, discussion posts, etc.).
- The recommended option is to select Discard unless it is important to save 'work' submitted by your preview user account to verify Gradebook settings. Discard un-enrolls the Preview User and removes any test attempts, assignment submissions, grades, and discussion posts that were made. Also deleted are any interactions that may have had created with the preview user, such as replies to a preview user’s discussion posts
- 4.1. If you choose Save, the preview user account will remain visible in the course roster, Gradebook, and any place where you posted something as that user. All data generated by the preview user will persist in the course and Gradebook until the option to Discard the Preview User is chosen.
- After selecting an exit option, the screen returns to the standard Instructor view
NOTE: Integrations added to our Blackboard environment, that are not native capabilities of the LMS itself, cannot be viewed through Student Preview tool. My Textbooks, Concourse Syllabus, and publisher/vendor integrations such as McGraw-Hill Connect, Pearson MyLab, FeedbackFruits, Cengage MindTap are not viewable through Student Preview mode.