Review an Assignment as a Learner Sees It
Opening an Assignment in Skyllful Simulator is how Administrators, Content Developers, and SMEs see the whole curriculum the way a Learner meets it, which is where thin descriptions, missing images, and a set of Lessons that does not hang together become obvious, and it works best in a QA Assignment built for the purpose.
What does Simulator show that a Lesson preview cannot?
The Previewer in Lesson Builder answers a question about one Lesson: does it work, does it read well, does it hold up on the device it was built for. That is the right tool for that job.
Simulator answers a different question. It shows you the whole curriculum, assembled, from the Learner's side of the glass: the Assignment sitting in a list with everything else they have been given, its thumbnail and title, the Lessons in the order you put them, each one carrying its own title and description, with its images rendered as the Learner will actually see them.
Problems at that level are invisible while you are building. A description that made sense next to the Lesson you had just written turns out to say nothing on its own. Two Lessons have nearly the same name. The order is the order you built them in rather than the order someone should work through them. An image that looked fine on your monitor is unreadable on a phone. None of that shows up Lesson by Lesson, and all of it shows up in ten minutes in Simulator.
Note: Use both, for different things. The Previewer is where you check a Lesson, including how it presents on each device preset set up for the Learning Program. Simulator is where you check that the Assignment adds up to a coherent piece of training. Device presets are configured on the Device Presets tab of Learning Program Settings and applied in the Previewer, so the sizes you test against are the ones your organisation actually uses.
What do you need before you can look?
Two things, and the first one catches people out.
The reviewer's account needs Simulator access in that Learning Program. When you add Learners, Skyllful filters the list to people who have Simulator access. An account with only Studio and IQ access does not appear at all, including your own. There is no message explaining the absence, so it reads as though you simply cannot find yourself.
Access is granted program by program, so anyone who reviews across several Learning Programs needs Simulator access in each. See Add a User.
Someone needs permission to add Learners to the Assignment. That is not only an Administrator: a Content Developer can be granted it, which matters because the reason to do this review is content quality, and content quality is a Content Developer's job. An SME brought in to check the training needs the same two things: Simulator access, and someone to add them.
Where should you do this?
Build a QA Assignment and review in that. Give it the Lessons you want to look at, add the people doing the reviewing, and leave the real Assignment alone.
It costs one Assignment and it solves the whole problem underneath this article. Nobody's test progress lands in a live Assignment, nobody has to remember to clean up afterwards, and the same QA Assignment is there next time.
If you review inside a live Assignment instead, your activity is real Learner activity: it counts toward completion and it moves readiness in Skyllful IQ. That is recoverable, but only if you remember to do the cleanup below.
How do you open it?
Step |
Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Open the Assignment in Studio and go to the Learners tab. |
| 2 | Click the plus (+) icon at the right of the column headings, choose Existing Learning Program Users, find yourself, and click Add Selected. You are added immediately; there is nothing to save. |
| 3 | Open the Assignment in Simulator, either from Simulator under your Learning Program in the main menu, or by using the Web Sim URL in the Assignment's URLS section. |
Best practice: Review on the kind of device your Learners actually use. A Learner working from a phone in a truck is not having the same experience as you are having on a monitor, and the gap between those two is where most surprises live.
What should you look for?
Work through the Assignment the way a Learner would, start to finish, without skipping. The point is not to test that things function. It is to ask whether this makes sense to somebody who was not in the room when it was built.
Look at |
Ask |
|---|---|
| The Assignment in the list | Would a Learner know what this is and why it is theirs, from the thumbnail and title alone, sitting beside their other Assignments? |
| The order of the Lessons | Does the sequence teach, or does it just reflect the order things were built in? Does anything depend on something that comes later? |
| Lesson titles | Read together, do they tell a coherent story? Are any two so similar that a Learner would not know which they had finished? |
| Descriptions | Does each one say what the Learner will be able to do afterwards? A description that only makes sense if you already know the content is a gap. |
| Images and screens | Do they render clearly at this size? Is anything cut off, too small to read, or showing something the Learner will not recognise from their own work? |
| Modes | Does each Lesson offer the modes you intended for this Assignment, and does the mix make sense for the audience? |
| What is missing | Is anything absent because it was never published? An unpublished Lesson does not appear to Learners at all. |
Note: Write down what you find as you go rather than fixing it as you go. Half the value of this pass is seeing the whole shape at once, and stopping to edit after the second Lesson costs you that.
How do you clean up after reviewing in a live Assignment?
Two steps, in this order.
Step |
Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Delete the lesson data for the reviewer, so the Lessons they worked through no longer count as completed. See Delete Lesson Data. |
| 2 | On the Assignment's Learners tab, find their row and click the X to remove them from the Assignment. |
Note: Do them in that order. Deleting the lesson data first clears the record; removing the person first leaves the activity behind with nobody obviously attached to it.
Note: Deleting lesson data cannot be undone, which is exactly why a QA Assignment is the better habit. Deleting a reviewer's test progress is safe. Deleting a real Learner's history is not, and the control does not know the difference.
FAQ
Why can't I find myself in the list of Learners to add?
Your account does not have Simulator access in this Learning Program. The list only offers people who have it.
Should I use this or the Previewer?
Both, for different questions. The Previewer checks a Lesson against your Learning Program's device presets. This checks whether the Assignment works as a whole: order, titles, descriptions, images, and what a Learner makes of the set.
Do I have to click Update after adding myself?
No. Adding a Learner takes effect immediately.
Is there a way in that skips the menu?
Yes. The Assignment's Web Sim URL, in the URLS section of the Assignment screen.
Why is a Lesson missing?
It is probably not published. The Unpublished Lessons counter at the top of the Assignment screen tells you how many are waiting.
Will my review show up in reporting?
In a live Assignment, yes: it counts toward completion and moves readiness in Skyllful IQ. In a QA Assignment built for testing, it stays out of the way of the numbers anyone is reading.
Do I have to be an Administrator to set this up?
No. Adding Learners to an Assignment is a permission, and a Content Developer can be granted it.
Skyllful Knowledge Base | Administrators, Content Developers, and SMEs