Give teachers a "student view" option

Give teacher's a "student view" option so they can routinely see student experience of content, particularly as it relates to grade books and assignments.

 It would be helpful to also see the parent view (without sensitive information of course) so they can help parents know what to look for.
  • Guest
  • Sep 8 2015
  • Under consideration
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  • Don Myers commented
    30 Aug 09:01pm

    It's 2024. Raise your hand if you are an LMS with a student view option. Every hand from every single LMS is raised...except Blackbaud* You say security and technical roadblocks are hindering progress, but all these other LMSs are able to create something. This is by far the most important piece in most users mind so maybe you put all your focus on this and ignore some of the other ideas that don't serve a large audience.

  • Jeanne Bliss commented
    9 Jan 04:22pm

    Michael - While this is a step in the right direction, I have had the "view as student" option in every other LMS I have used as a teacher - even older systems. I hope to see Blackbaud move more in this direction in the near future.

  • Admin
    Michael Morrissette commented
    18 Aug, 2023 07:51pm

    Hey Folks -


    I know that it's been a while since an update was published on this Idea, so I just wanted to take a moment to provide one to all of you.


    Implementing a student view option is something we're interested in and it's something we know all of you are really wanting to see implemented. There are some challenges from a technical and security standpoint, but we are making some progress that you'll be able to see later this school year.


    There are some features that we're looking to implement that give teachers a student view of a specific piece of content, but not necessarily the entire student experience.


    For example, in the new Assessment experience, the preview option available to teachers while building the Assessment is a true student experience. That preview shows exactly what a student would see when they take the assessment. This is the pattern that we're wanting to build into more features as we develop updated modules.


    In the 23-24 school year, you all will have access to a new Student/Parent Assignment Center and Assignment Details screen. As part of that project, we are revamping the 'See student preview' option that currently exists for Assignments. In the current iteration, teachers doesn't actually see the true view of an assignment as though they were a student. They also don't have the ability go through any of the workflows that students have access to. In the upcoming project, teachers will have access to the -exact- same view that students have access to when they preview an Assignment. They will also be able to go through the exact same workflows a student goes through via the preview (create tasks, upload files, submit the Assignment, etc.). There will be some limitations with this preview, however. For example, a teacher will not be able to interact with the Google Drive integration to upload a document and teachers will not be able to interact with LTI resources in the preview.


    As more of the LMS is revamped / iterated on, we want to eventually bring the ability for teachers to click a button on their Class to see the given Class page as though they were a student. This isn't something that is coming in the near future, however. In the meantime, we're hoping to bring the concept of previewing specific content, akin to the preview option in the new Assessment experience and the upcoming preview option in the new Assignment experience, to more features as we build them.


    -Mike

  • Guest commented
    18 Aug, 2023 02:21pm

    2023... still not "planned"

  • lauren marcus eisenberg commented
    25 May, 2023 01:44pm

    Enabling teachers to have a student view option would go a very long way in increasing teacher satifaction with the BB K12 LMS.

  • Shawna Khan commented
    24 Apr, 2023 04:35pm

    This has more votes than any other idea. How is this still under consideration and when are we going to get an update on the status of it being considered? Thank you!


  • Ashley Wiley commented
    8 Nov, 2022 12:05am

    The student preview option is great but we still need to help teach students how to upload an assignment. If the assignment is set up for a student to upload a document, the preview feature should also include what the submission box looks like as well. It would be great if teachers could demonstrate how to upload a doc.

  • Ashley Wiley commented
    27 Oct, 2022 04:03pm

    Teachers reach out to me about having access to a student view all the time! Our teachers are mainly the ones who teach the students how to use the Blackbaud system/upload an assignment. If there is not an easy and safe way to teach them how to do that then it seems like the class pages are not useful at all to students.

  • Melissa Battis commented
    11 Aug, 2022 01:23am

    Hey all, here is my annual request to know where we stand on this idea. We are, yet again, trying to strategize on how advisors can support their students when they are unable to view the LMS as their student. This is especially important for our Learning Assistance Specialists as well as our student advisors. I know it is under consideration, but I was wondering if we had an update as our school years are all starting up again!

  • Guest commented
    11 Mar, 2022 09:02pm

    It would also be good if advisors had a student view that would enable them to see a student submission page and status of the work to help advisors support their students.

  • Jeanne Townsend commented
    10 Nov, 2021 09:53pm

    We have circled this mulberry bush every year! Some ideas for the team working on implementing this feature...along with being able to view an actual student setup, it would be very helpful if we had the ability to provide teachers/administrators/other users a "demo" student they could view. If we had a demo student and demo parents, we could provide a stand-alone login to both of these accounts and let teachers, etc. actually log in and use our system as a student or parent user. Here are the caveats:

    • We do NOT want this demo student/parent to show up on lists, directories, reports, etc.

    • We do NOT want this demo student/parent to "count" in reports or analytics.

    • We would LOVE the ability to "copy" an actual student in order to quickly and easily create a new demo student at any time, with corresponding classes, sports, etc. We would want the ability to alter the copied record to remove sensitive info and de-identify the student we copied.

    Seems there are two key purposes of this larger "student view" idea:

    1) To provide certain adults the ability to "see" what a specific student sees/experiences (so teachers/coaches/advisors can see their students' class pages, assignments, resource boards, schedules, grades, etc.).

    2) To provide users the ability to experience the system as a different type of user. We would use this, for example, to allow our academic office support staff to understand how students navigate their schedule, or to allow our parent program staff to understand how parents find information on the resource board.

    Thank you for working on this challenging, but oh-so important functionality!

  • Mary Zieten commented
    14 Sep, 2021 03:30pm

    It looks like this was in today's update, so thanks for that! It is very helpful for our teachers! Just one bit of feedback I'm hearing from our teachers is the ability to do this from the student's assignment tab as well. Is that something that's coming? It is quite a trek for a learning coordinator to help a student with assignments if they have to go to each of the individual classes rather than being able to do it from the student's record.

  • Mark Schumacher commented
    1 Sep, 2021 02:05pm

    We need this option back on assignments, especially those with Online Submissions. Now it shows me the first student on my roster. Last year's format for assignments was perfect.

  • Nick Marchese commented
    19 Aug, 2021 02:45pm

    I'd be interested in how this conversation progresses.

  • Ben Leddy commented
    19 Aug, 2021 02:39pm

    Update: For folks who'd like to discuss the impersonation needs, please comment here or connect directly with Angela Addison, and the Core team will reach out. Thank you!



  • Lori MacConnell commented
    18 Aug, 2021 07:21pm

    Since the new assignment details updates, teachers can't show an assignment with links and downloads without also showing the evaluation information. We need this "student view" now more than ever so that teachers may walk through assignments and steps through zoom or a projector with the students.

  • Phyllis Armstrong commented
    12 Aug, 2021 05:55pm

    I have already voted for the idea to give "view only" impersonation abilities to teachers but wonder if we could go a step further. Our teachers/advisors would love to be able to impersonate a student (and parents) to show them how things work in our system. A "view only" situation would not allow for that. It would be great to have full impersonation ability for teachers, but only for a designated few sample students and parents.

  • Melissa Battis commented
    10 Aug, 2021 04:43pm

    Is there an update on this, as it is a top vote getter and something that would be very very beneficial as we work to support our students!

  • Morgan Kunze commented
    15 Jul, 2021 06:45pm

    Based on info from UC Virtual on 7/15, I understand this is currently in discovery. Would like to encourage developers to consider adding a "generic" student/parent view rather than a specific impersonation-type view ... I don't think my faculty are looking to see what a specific student experience is, but more "what will this assignment / topic / whatever look like from a student dashboard?" Just my $0.02

  • Priscilla Lopez commented
    21 Jun, 2021 08:36pm

    Here are my suggestions to add:

    >Teacher, Coaches, Advisors, and Activity Leaders impersonate Students View and Parent View with Read-Only rights to their Groups (a button in the group would be ideal) so they can the views of their groups only.

    >Principals, Department Heads (ie Math Department) and Learning Specialists, Academic Manager, Activity Manager, Advisory Manager, Athletics Manager Office Staff with Student View and Parent View with "Read Only" rights to their School Level so they can see the student/parent view of report cards, transcripts, classes etc.

    >Admissions Officers Student and Parent view with Read Only views to their assigned Candidates and Parent of candidates Only so they can assist parents.

    >Admissions Manager views with Read/Write views to their assigned Candidates and parent of candidates Only so they can assist with Contract issues.

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