Blackboard Learn has a Student Preview option. This option allows administrators/instructors to view their courses as the student would see it.
Student Preview
The Student Preview allows instructors to view their course from the perspective of a student. In particular, this is useful for confirming time/date availability, adaptive release criteria, grade weighting, and other course features that control what a student sees in the course. For more details on how to enable Student Preview, see Blackboard Help.
Clicking on the Student Preview button moves the Instructor into Student Preview mode. While in Student Preview mode the Instructor can interact with the course as if a student, including taking quizzes/tests, submitting assignments, posting to forums, posting to blogs, etc.
While in Student Preview mode, the instructor can control the settings related to how the data created as the preview student is handled upon exiting Student Preview mode by clicking the Settings button. By default, the instructor is prompted upon exit as to whether the preview student and all of the data created as the preview student is deleted (the default) or kept.
An instructor would keep the data to be able to check grade calculations, for example, or verify other behaviors that require the instructor to view student activity — in this case, the preview student’s activity. After exiting Student Preview mode and keeping the data, the Instructor can navigate to areas of the course where they can view that preview of that student’s activity, such as the Grade Center. The preview student is clearly identified by the appended “_previewuser” text on the username and last name.
To delete any retained data, the instructor must re-enter Student Preview and exit again, this time choosing “Delete the data” at the prompt. Choosing to delete the data unenrolls the preview student from the course (and, if not in use in any other of the instructor’s courses, deletes it from the system). All activity conducted or created as the preview student is removed from the course permanently. This includes attempts, submissions, grades, posts, etc.