[Student View] Warning you are leaving student view
A continual issue I'm seeing with student view is that instructors are utilizing student view to see what a student sees, but it doesn't actually replicate what the student sees. For example, when they click on a link that brings them to another course (perhaps where the information was copied from) that the instructor has access to the course through their credentials (which seem to get bypassed by the student view). These links would not be able to be accessed by the student based on their credentials. Student view doesn’t seem to recognize or give notification that you are leaving “Student View” and are now looking at the link through your own access, not student view. Technically you can see this as the pink box is no longer on the page, but that often get missed because of the instructor or developer’s concentration on the content or because the link seems to have worked. Thereby, when they think the link works, it wouldn’t actually work for a student. A better notification to say that they're leaving student view and anything past this this student might not actually be able to access or see would be really beneficial in determining whether or not what they are seeing truly is what the student can or cannot see. An option for this might also include having a student login that would not be connected to any other course to help ensure that what the instructor is seeing truly is a student view. On a related note, these issues do not present themselves in the Link validation tool because technically the links in the course are valid links. They may just not be valid for a given student. It would be nice to have the system identify links that may not potentially work because they link to another course, a related issue I see quite frequently as well.
Provide a better notification, maybe a warning box, that indicates you are leaving student view and that anything past this point may not be able to be seen by the student without the correct access or credentials. Another option for this might also include having a temporary fake (test) student login where you could truly see what the student would see. This login would be like a ghost student that is only in the course for a predetermined amount of time that would not be connected to any other course to help ensure that what the instructor is seeing truly is a student view. Another additional solution that should be implemented is to the Link Checker tool, that identifies when a link may lead to a different course that a student may not have access to.
admin,instructor,designer
