Mobile learning check
Most students will take your course on a phone. Check it there before you launch.
Why it needs its own pass
A course looks different on a narrow screen: the sidebar outline moves out of the way, the video shrinks, the account table stacks into rows, and long lesson titles wrap. None of that is broken — but it is where a course stops being comfortable, and desktop testing will not show it to you.
The check
Use a real phone, signed in as a test student with access.
The account area
- Open My courses.
- Confirm the table is readable stacked, and that course titles are not truncated to uselessness.
- Confirm the thumbnails are present, not placeholders.
- Confirm Access the course is tappable.
The course page
- Confirm the featured image and description read well at that width.
- Find the outline. Confirm the sections expand and collapse by tap.
- Confirm the progress bar is visible.
- Confirm lesson titles and estimated times fit on one or two lines.
A lesson
- Open a lesson from the outline.
- Confirm the video fills the width and plays, including full screen.
- Confirm the lesson content is readable without horizontal scrolling.
- Confirm the previous and next controls and the back link are reachable.
- Confirm the completion checkbox is tappable — it is a small target, and it is how progress works in manual mode.
Blocked access
- Sign out.
- Open the course.
- Confirm the login form or no-access message renders properly, and that any product links in it are tappable.
The two things that most often need fixing
Lesson titles. They appear in the outline, where the column is narrow. Titles written for a desktop table wrap to three lines and make the outline unusable. Keep them short.
Videos. A video embedded in the lesson content by pasting raw markup rather than using the lesson's own video field is the usual cause of a player that overflows the screen. Use the lesson's Video field. See Lesson video.
Data and playback
Video is streamed from YouTube or Vimeo, so playback quality and data use are theirs, not yours. If your students are likely to be on mobile data, say so in the course description and keep lessons short.
Verify
Run the four passes above on one phone, and repeat the lesson pass on a tablet if your audience uses one. Fix titles and video embeds first — layout adjustments beyond that belong to your theme.