What students see on the lesson page

What a student sees after clicking into a lesson looks nothing like what you see editing the course in your dashboard. This covers what your content actually looks like once it reaches them.

Desktop/tablet: three columns

• Left: a slim always-on rail — the school logo, a back-to-course arrow, quick-jump icons that switch the center column straight to the "Notes" or "Discussion" tab (no need to scroll to the tab bar first), and an account menu at the bottom (billing, profile settings, dark mode, log out). Hovering any icon pops up a text label immediately. My Courses / Learning / Messages / Certificates aren't here — deliberately removed, since they'd pull a student away from the lesson they're mid-way through; mobile still has them, see "Mobile" below
• Center: the player (or the text/quiz/assignment content), followed by a quick-action strip (reactions, bookmark, add a timestamped note) and 4 tabs: Overview, Notes, Discussion, Transcript
• Right: the curriculum, resizable by dragging its edge with the mouse (drag it narrow enough and it collapses; arrow keys work too), and it remembers the width you last set. Each chapter can expand/collapse, and the chapter the student is currently in starts expanded. Students can mark a lesson complete by clicking its circle directly in the curriculum, without opening that lesson (for video lessons, whether this manual mark works depends on the teacher's setting — see "When a lesson counts as complete" below)

A "theater mode" button in the top-right temporarily hides both side columns and enlarges the player — useful when a student just wants to focus on the video.

Player controls

Whatever the video source — platform-hosted or an embedded YouTube/Vimeo link — students see the same custom control bar, not each platform's own native chrome. Left to right: play/pause, current time, progress bar, volume (hover to reveal a vertical volume slider), a gear menu (playback speed 0.5x–2x; platform-hosted video also gets a manual quality picker, 240p through 1080p — YouTube/Vimeo don't offer this, since their own streaming engines don't expose manual quality switching to outside code), a captions toggle (platform-hosted video only — YouTube/Vimeo's own captions aren't wired in, so for an externally-linked video it's worth providing a transcript or subtitle file separately for students who need one), theater mode, and fullscreen. The bar fades out a few seconds after the mouse stops moving during playback, and stays visible while paused.

Dragging the progress bar on platform-hosted video pops up a thumbnail preview of that point in time, for quickly finding a moment; YouTube/Vimeo don't have this.

Tapping fullscreen on an iPhone opens an in-page pseudo-fullscreen mode, not the system's native fullscreen — Safari itself doesn't support fullscreen for an arbitrary web element. Watching in portrait shows a one-time "rotate for a better view" hint that fades out after a few seconds.

Reaction "danmaku" replay

The emoji reactions students tap in the quick-action strip (❤️👍😂😮🤔👏) aren't just logged — they can also replay as floating "danmaku" text drifting across the top of the player: when playback reaches a moment other students reacted to before, those same emoji float back across the screen, giving a sense of watching alongside everyone else who reacted there. This is off by default — a student toggles it themselves via the eye icon in the quick strip, and the setting only lives in their own browser (it doesn't change what other students see). Whatever a student just reacted with floats out immediately regardless of the toggle.

Difficulty and duration

• Difficulty: you set this yourself on the lesson's edit page (Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced/Not set) — it shows up in the curriculum list and the lesson overview
• Duration: platform-hosted video (uploaded directly through this platform) is detected automatically and shown as mm:ss. Embedded YouTube/Vimeo videos aren't auto-detected, so the curriculum and lesson overview default to showing 00:00; a teacher can type the real minutes/seconds in on the lesson's edit page, and once saved it replaces the 00:00 placeholder with the real duration

When a lesson counts as complete

• Video lessons: a student is marked complete automatically once they've watched 90% of the video, with a congratulatory toast. This threshold is fixed platform-wide and isn't currently adjustable per school
• Every other lesson type (text/quiz/assignment/live/download): only the student's own click on "Mark complete" counts
• The "Mark complete" button for video lessons (at the bottom of the Overview tab, and the circle in the curriculum) is off by default — a teacher can turn it on via "Let students mark lessons complete themselves" on the course's Course info tab, which then works as a manual fallback for a student who watched elsewhere, or doesn't want to wait for the automatic check. While it's off, video lessons can only complete via the 90%-watched check. This setting never affects non-video lessons — their manual button always works

Mobile

Three columns don't fit on a phone, so it becomes:

• A top bar: a back arrow to the course page, the current lesson title, a "Curriculum X/Y" button (showing completion progress, e.g. 3/6), and a "More" menu in the top-right — My Courses, Learning, Messages, Certificates, Account Settings, and Log out all live here, the only place on mobile to reach them (the desktop rail doesn't offer them — see "Desktop/tablet" above)
• Tapping "Curriculum" opens a sheet that slides up from the bottom to browse the full curriculum — the video keeps playing while the sheet is open
• The 4 tabs become swipeable, with a soft gradient hint on the right edge showing there's more to scroll to
• A "Previous / Next lesson" button pair sits below the content, for students who'd rather not open the curriculum every time

FAQ

Do I still need to put the YouTube video's length in the lesson title myself?

No — the lesson's edit page now has a dedicated duration field (for embedded videos only). Fill it in and the curriculum/overview both show the real duration; the title trick is no longer needed.

Can students un-complete a lesson they already marked done?

Yes, both the curriculum circle and the Overview tab's button toggle back and forth.