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Ability to See What Students See Without Logging In and Out

Deborah Forteza

March 29, 2011 18:47

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I don't know how complicated it would be to implement this feature, but here goes.

Some programs allow you to go somewhere to "see how other people see this page" or something like that. Because I work with all the information on Populi and need to make sure that some people see it and some don't, we have several test logins to see what each of these people see (we have a test login for students, faculty, and staff, for example).

When I'm trying out something new or opening registration or posting some info that I'm not sure a specific role can see, it's quite tedious to log out as an admin and log in as someone else, particularly if I'm posting info that affects various groups or I have to tweak things. 

I would be totally amazed by the Populi team if you guys were able to create a place where I could go to "see what this page looks like to x person" or some other way to see what that person sees without having to log out.

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5 comments

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  Christal Fehr March 29, 2011 21:05

  With the LMS program we have been working with so far, I can "masquerade" as any person who has an account allowing me to see anything from their point of view... then click the X button to close out of the "masquerade" and I'm back at my own view... very handy!

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  Shane Flynn March 29, 2011 21:34

  Interesting idea.

  Currently I'm just opening another browser (firefox, Chrome or Safari) and log in as my test student. I then can switch back and forth very easily w/o closing or switching away from my administrative window. It works great!

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  Brendan O'Donnell March 29, 2011 21:44

  Thanks for pointing that out, Shane. Although we don't widely publicize this for security reasons, if you want to be logged in to Populi as two different users while on the same computer, you can do so if you use two different browser programs. You could keep the Student open in Chrome and your Admin login open in Firefox, for instance.

  Regarding the idea about a "See what the student sees" button, the Populi look-and-feel is pretty unified across all User Roles. The LMS isn't as customizable as some other products simply because we want any student who's ever taken any Populi online course to be able to easily navigate any other Populi online course. So, the student generally sees what a faculty member sees, but without any options to edit or modify anything.

  FYI, students can see Course Info, Assignments, Tests, and Lessons; their access to each is circumscribed by the inability to modify most of what they see (they can obviously participate in discussions, upload assignments, etc.).

  I hope that helps!

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  Deborah Forteza March 30, 2011 13:44

  I do appreciate Shane's comment, too! I'm definitely going to use that.

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  Michael Riley March 30, 2011 13:50

  If you're using Chrome, there is an extension called IE Tab that enables you to have a tab within Chrome running Internet Explorer; you could have the student login on one tab and your own login on the other. I think there are similar plugins for Firefox.