Using Blackboard’s student preview, you can review the course content from a student’s perspective (as a “preview user”). You can also validate course behaviors, such as the conditional release of content and how grades appear.
However, when you exit the student preview, your preview user role and the data associated are deleted. This is a default setting that you have the option of adjusting. Keeping the preview user and all data will permit you to see how student activity presents itself to you as the instructor, such as grade calculations. If you keep the data, the preview user account appears in the course roster, Grade Center, and any place you interacted as that user. This can be of benefit, for example, when you want to run through the entire process of submitting an assignment as a “mock” student, grading it as an instructor (and possibly providing feedback), then seeing how the grade and feedback appear in your preview user role.
Keeping the Preview User & Data
- From your Blackboard course, click on the Student Preview icon, located in the top right of the course page.
- Select Settings from the gold Student Preview banner at the top of your Blackboard course page.
- In the Exit Student Preview window, A) check Do not ask me about the preview user when exiting student preview, B) select Keep the preview user and all data, C) then click Save.
- In instructor view, the student preview icon now appears with a green dot in the center, indicating that the preview user account is now saved.
NOTE: The adjusted preview user settings will automatically carry over the next time you enter Student Preview in any of your other Blackboard courses.
Additional information regarding student preview can be found in this article from Blackboard’s Help Center.
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This article was created and is maintained by the Office of Academic Technology.
If you need assistance incorporating this article in your course, please contact an Educational Technologist.