Overview
Instructors can create a demo student to preview a course from a student’s perspective. As a demo student, instructors can fully interact with the course as a student would, including completing quizzes, submitting assignments, and checking grades and feedback.
How is Demo Student different from View as Learner?
View as Learner is a tool that is available when clicking on your name in the minibar.
View as Learner allows you to view the course content as a student would but does not allow you to submit work that can be graded by an instructor. For example, when viewing as learner you can see course content that is available, post to the discussion (but under your own name), and submit an assignment or quiz (but submissions do not show up in the grade book). Since View as Learner does not create any record of work, it does not affect course statistics.
In contrast, the Demo Student is a user account that can post in discussions, submit assignments, and take quizzes in its own name. The instructor can then view and grade the Demo Student’s work. The Demo Student will then be able to view grades and feedback left by the instructor. The Demo Student and its work is counted in class statistics such as grade averages, so you will want to delete it once you are finished.
When to use View as Learner: You want to see how the course looks to students, the steps for them to post in discussions, submit assignments, etc.
When to use Demo Student: You want to test a grading process or see how students are seeing your feedback.
Important
1. A demo student is associated with an individual course.
2. Only one demo student at a time can exist in a course.
3. Demo students can be deleted once instructors are finished, so as not to affect class data.
Instructions
Click each accordion button below to learn more:
Create a Demo Student
In CUNY SPS courses, the Demo Student tool is available under Tools. From the drop-down menu, select CUNY Demo Student.
Select Create Demo Student.
A dialog box will indicate that a demo student has been created. Select OK.
Impersonate the Demo Student
Navigate to the Classlist tool on the course navbar or in Course Admin.
Locate Student, Demo among the list of students. (The Demo Student will be named ‘Student, Demo’ and their username will be demo_student_{Course Unit ID}.
Select the drop-down menu next to Student, Demo. Then select Impersonate.
A dialog box will open asking for confirmation. Select Yes to continue.
The user’s name at the top-right of the window will be replaced by Demo Student, Impersonating. You are now impersonating a demo student.
Note: the Demo Student will not work with some third-party LTI-linked tools like VoiceThread and publisher materials but will work with Panopto, Digication, and Turnitin. Instructors can impersonate the Demo Student and submit files to Turnitin-enabled assignments in order to generate similarity reports.
Once you are finished interacting with the course as a demo student, select Demo Student in the top right then, from the dropdown menu, select the X next to Impersonating: Demo Student to exit and return to instructor view.
As the instructor, you can now view or grade the demo student’s work. The author will be listed as Demo Student.
To see grades or feedback that you have left as an instructor, impersonate the Demo Student again.
Delete the Demo Student
After you have finished working with the demo student, you can delete the demo student. Otherwise, the demo student remains in the course and is counted in course statistics such as grade averages.
Note: Deleting the demo student will also delete all work submitted by the demo student in the course, except for discussions. Discussion posts remain but the author will appear as “anonymous” instead of Demo Student. You will need to delete these discussion posts separately.
Navigate to Tools on the course navbar. From the dropdown menu, select CUNY Demo Student.
Select Delete Demo Student.
A dialog box will ask if you wish to proceed with deleting the demo student. Select Delete Demo Student.
A dialog box will confirm the demo user was deleted successfully.
Note: After you have deleted the demo student, you can still create a demo student again in the course as many times as needed.
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