Some users may find manually starting each video and closing out each lesson slow and annoying on your course system.
But teachers and students may have the ability to leverage auto play and auto completion features to allow students to flow through your lessons without any manual steps.
Video Tutorial Of Auto Play & Complete
Course Auto Play Settings
Autoplay helps students automatically start viewing video lessons when they navigate to the lesson.
When your students click on a lesson, the video for that topic will automatically start playing.
This also means that the audio should start playing as well, without requiring a second click somewhere else to unmute. It’s also annoying that the unmute video button or icon or slider is different in every single app.
Some platforms like WordPress LearnDash call this feature AutoStart.
If a student is browsing all the available modules, and they start a module with multiple lessons, autoplay should start the first or next unwatched video in that module.
In some cases, autoplay may be designed to show a brief countdown timer before starting the lesson video.
Autoplay makes taking courses seamless and avoids the annoying clicking around required to get each lesson going.
Course Auto Complete Options
Some course systems also offer course auto complete features at the end of every video.
When a student reaches the end of the video with auto complete enabled, the system sets that lesson as completed for the student.
And for some systems that show a course progress bar, auto complete will update the percent complete for the course.
Sometimes this feature is called Auto Advance, like on Kajabi.
After updating stats, the auto complete feature will take students to the very next lesson. This will work regardless of whether the student is in the middle of a module or at the end of a module and the next lesson is at the start of the next module.
In some cases, students may see a countdown timer before automatically taking them to the next lesson.
Auto complete, is like binge-watching a TV series on a smart video app. It can help you get through a bunch of lessons very easily.
Additional Course Considerations
Facilitate Course Accessibility
Auto features can drastically help students that have vision problems, mobility impairment, or can’t use a traditional keyboard and mouse.
These features can also help international or English as a second language students that aren’t familiar with the on-screen words for each of the steps required to watch the next video.
As a teacher, try to set your defaults to make the majority of your students lives better. Calling out these features on your course sales page can also help earn a few more students.
Learning Management Systems Offer Different Settings
Since each LMS is different, teachers will notice that different settings may be used across systems.
Some systems may not have one or either of the settings.
Some systems may combine settings for simplicity and usability.
Styling and Theming Auto Settings
On some systems, you may be able to tweak the exact words on the labels and buttons for auto options.
You may also be able to change the colors of global or specific auto text, popups, buttons, and dialog boxes.
Wrap Up
If you’re a teacher, you should find out if your LMS supports AutoPlay and AutoComplete features.
If you have these options, check out if they are enabled… They’re great options to turn on as a default for your students.
Alternatively, at least find out if individual students can turn it on by user profile or if the only teacher option is a global on/off.
These auto settings will help your students navigate your course system more efficiently and stay in the zone while consuming lessons in batches.
For more creative teacher tips to create, operate, and grow your online courses – check out the ArtsyCourseExperts blog.
