Know it works before your learners find out.
Drop in the course zip you’d upload to your LMS. A test learner takes it start to finish, the way a new hire would: every slide, every quiz question, then a check of what your LMS heard. You get a short fix list, one change at a time, with the steps for your authoring tool.
Your first playtest is free. No card needed.
What it catches
- ✓A slide no learner can get past. Next never turns on, or a button leads nowhere. The fix list names the slide and the trigger to check.
- ✓A finished course your LMS never hears was finished. Completion, pass or fail, and the score, read back from a test LMS the way yours would read them.
- ✓A course that never connects to the LMS, usually because it was published for Web instead of LMS.
- ✓Buttons a keyboard-only learner can’t reach, and focus they can’t see (WCAG 2.1.1 and 2.4.7).
- ✓Code or media loaded over plain http, which every LMS blocks, so the course breaks for everyone.
- ✓Where a learner gets lost. The test learner thinks out loud on every slide and notes what’s confusing, too long, or out of order. Those notes are marked worth a look, never must fix: a second opinion to weigh.
- ✓Whether it picks up where they left off when a learner comes back.
How it works
1. Drop in the zip
The same file you’d upload to your LMS. It’s read in a second: the authoring tool, the LMS standard, the slide count. A zip published for Web gets the fix right there.
2. Pick who takes it
A new hire who reads everything, a keyboard-only learner, someone in a hurry, or someone who gets it wrong. Up to two per playtest.
3. Watch, or close the tab
A progress bar shows the learner moving through your slides. About 10 minutes per learner. We email you when the fix list is ready.
4. Fix one thing at a time
The report opens on the most important fix, with numbered steps in your authoring tool and how to check it worked. Done, then the next one.
Works with
Storyline, Rise 360, Captivate, and iSpring, and any course published as SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004 (including courses made of several modules), or cmi5. In a Storyline course, the test learner answers the quiz from the course’s own answer key; in any other, it answers from what the course taught, the way a learner who read it would.
What it isn’t
- ✕Not a replacement for a final check in your own LMS. Playtest plays the course in a standard test LMS. Each LMS has its own quirks, so launch it once in yours before it goes to learners.
- ✕Not a person. What it finds by playing the course (a stuck slide, completion never reported, a button out of reach) is fact. The test learner’s notes are a second opinion, marked worth a look.
Private by design
Your course plays in a sealed browser on Pedagrade’s own machines. It never touches the internet, is never sent to any outside AI company, and is never used to train anything. The upload is deleted as soon as your report is ready. Trust and security
Your first playtest is free
Every account gets one free playtest. The Individual plan ($9.99/mo) includes them, up to 20 a month.
Playtest your courseTeams and schools: talk to us.