It is a really good idea to test your open course before you make it live for users.  Invite someone else to work through it with fresh eyes, as they may not be as familiar with the content, navigation and structure as you will be and might be able to spot issues which you can sort out before the rest of the world sees your open course.  This is especially important if you have any assessment in the course which counts towards a badge or statement of participation.  To invite someone to review your draft course if you have the manager role you can manually enrol them on the course and give them the 'reviewer' role. If you don't have the manager role, please contact the mailbox to request that the user is given the reviewer role for your course (please first ask the person to login to OpenLearn Create so we can find their account in the user database).

You may have chosen to develop your open course publicly, by making it live while still uploading and reorganising content, with some collaborators involved, to pick up feedback from others on your pedagogic approach.  However testing in these circumstances is still good practice, because although you may have ironed out most problems, if you have reorganised content at a later stage in the open course creation process, you might have broken links or other navigational issues to fix.

Checklist for testing:

• Navigation - does it work and can users find their way through your course successfully, are there any dead ends?
• Accessibility - have you provided transcriptions for all video and audio materials you have uploaded?  Are all your in-text links labelled to help users who have screen readers?  Have you provided long descriptions of images to help visually impaired users?  Is the terminology and language you have used accessible - have you explained things clearly so that learners will understand?
  
• Do all your images, videos and audio files have suitable captions, acknowledging the source and licencing information if necessary?
• Do you have instructions to use 'Ctrl click' to open external links in a new window so learners do not navigate away from the site?