Learner view
The learner view in OPAL allows course owners to change the perspective of the course with just one click to see exactly what their learners can see. With the learner view, course owners can check at any time whether their courses work as expected.
Whether for self-testing registered rules, finding errors pointed out in the feedback from your students, or better understanding the path for learners in your course in general – OPAL gives you an intuitive and simple tool with the learner view.
Any changes made in the learner view will be retained for the course. If files are deleted, forum posts are written or enrolments are made, these changes will then also be visible in the course. If necessary, these changes must be undone manually.
Activate the learner view
In each course, course owners can find the course menu at the top. This menu contains the learner view, which is represented by the book icon with the eye .
Clicking on this icon will let you switch from the course view to the view of a learner:
Course view
Learner view
Deactivate the learner view
To return to the course view, click again on the now activated icon 
or, as usual, on the course view icon
.
Use cases
Course owners can go through the learning path they have conceived for their course participants. Besides checking the entire learning path, it is also possible to test the use of certain rules or gain general insight into how end-users see OPAL.
For example, what can be checked by course owners?
- Is content displayed that should only be visible after enrolling in the course?
- Can learners access tests that should only be accessible under certain conditions?
- Can learners enrolled in a specific learning group see information that should be reserved for participants in another learning group?
- Does the learning path for learners work as intended?
- Is content invisible to learners that should actually not have any restrictions?
Rights in the learner view
The learner view is not a course preview, but it allows course owners to go through their course from the perspective of a learner and ensure that the developed learning scenarios are working as expected. The following rights are set when switching to the learner view:
- All user attributes (name, institution, etc.) are retained.
- The “group tutor” role and group memberships are not affected by switching to the learner view.
- Only course owners’ specific rights are overridden in the learner view. This change is only effective at course level (not in the overall system).
When returning to the course view, course owners get back full access to the course.
Access to the learner view
In addition to course owners, the following users have access to the learner view:
- Content managers (within the institution)
- System administrators (system-wide)
- Users who have been granted access to the course editor via the rights management
More information
- To be able to use the learner view to its full extent, the course must be set to Public – visible to registered users (
). If this is not the case, a message stating that access to the course is blocked (which would also be displayed to learners) will appear when switching to the learner view. For more information on publishing a course, see the General access to courses and resources help page. - Course element visits in the learner view are also counted in the course statistics.
- Any action taken by course owners in the learner view will also be retained for future switches to the learner view.