How do I stop learners from skipping ahead in a training video?

Q: How do I stop learners from skipping ahead in a training video?

In the video's Design settings, turn off Allow Seeking so learners cannot drag the seek bar. Then, in Settings, turn on Prevent passing required interactions so learners cannot move past a question they have not answered. Turn off Allow skipping on each question that must be answered.

Stop Learners Skipping Ahead in a Training Video

Short answer

In the video's Design settings, turn off Allow Seeking so learners cannot drag the seek bar. Then, in Settings, turn on Prevent passing required interactions so learners cannot move past a question they have not answered. Turn off Allow skipping on each question that must be answered.

How to do it

Open the video and select Design. In the Player section, turn off Allow Seeking. Also turn off Show Fast Forward.
Select Settings. Under Viewer experience, turn on Prevent passing required interactions.
Select Interactions and open each question. Make sure Allow skipping is off.
Optional: under Playback in Settings, turn on Prevent pausing. Under Viewer experience, turn on Verify attention to check that the learner is still there.
Test in a private browser window where you are not signed in. Try to drag the seek bar and press the right arrow key. The video does not move forward.

Playback section of Mindstamp video Settings with Allow resumed views and Prevent pausing highlighted — Settings > Playback: Allow resumed views lets returning viewers pick up where they left off. Prevent pausing removes the pause option.

Viewer experience section of Mindstamp video Settings with Prevent passing required interactions highlighted — Settings > Viewer experience: Prevent passing required interactions stops viewers from seeking past an interaction they must click.

What each setting does

Allow Seeking off: the seek bar still shows progress, but learners cannot drag it. The arrow keys do not seek. To hide the bar, also turn off Show Seekbar.
Prevent passing required interactions: a learner cannot seek forward past a question they have not answered, or past a must-click interaction. The player returns them to that point. Seeking backward still works.
Allow skipping off: the question has no skip control, so the learner must answer to continue.
Prevent pausing: learners cannot pause while the video plays.
Verify attention: the player checks at a time you set that the learner is still present.

Why this matters for completion

Progress events, and the SCORM completion checkpoint, follow the playback position. If learners can drag the seek bar to the end, they can reach completion without watching. The WATCHED_PERCENTAGE in reports counts the seconds actually watched, so it shows the difference.

Things to know

You see skip controls and can seek while you are signed in as an owner, manager or editor. Always test in a private window.
Chapters, navigation buttons and answer actions that you set up can still move the learner to another time. That is by design.
Prevent passing required interactions, Prevent pausing and Verify attention show a Core plan label in the app. The seek bar controls are on all plans.