How to provide tooltip-like hint on a Touch Screen and user to move it to another item (viiew tooltip for other screen elements)

Background:

I have a list of lessons and I don't want to confuse the user with a long description (lots of text) for each lesson.

So someone suggested having something like a tooltip (to the right of (nouns) in the screen shot).

But on a touch screen I'm wondering how I can have the user move/select other lessons to get the tooltip for them.

Update: There will potentially be dozens of items in Mastered and Passed, and possibly dozens in In Progress (although that would be the "Teachers version"). And the students have communication difficulties, and may not be able to read well. So I'm trying to keep the lesson names short.

Some options:

1. Maybe put a drag bar ( [...] looking thing on the top of the popup and they can drag it up or down.


2. If they touch to the right of the Lesson name it moves to that lesson. This is tricky b/c if they click on the lesson name they'll jump to that lesson.

Any other suggestions?

Answer

You have hidden information first and trying to invent some interaction to return it back.

Maybe the problem somewhere in information design. The better solution could be to provide an abstract for each lesson. Having a lot of lessons you could group it by some meaningful way.

UPDATE
Assuming user constraints (speech, reading, movement difficulties) I think you should choose other way of organizing your software.

I think you should provide minimal physical and mental efforts for users to use the software. Interaction like tooltips requires precise movements, giving more control to a user. So there is balance between simplicity and control. In your case you could consciously shift the balance to simplicity side as this is requirement.

You could organize the lessons in your course as a rigid structure. Probably you need help of doctors and pedagogs to create optimal structure. So the course will lead the user, but the way will be optimal. As a result users will pass through the course with minimal efforts, passing each time to the next element with just a few control over system.

Futher, for every patient or typical case the structure could be build individually by specialist. This is where your system is flexible.

Again, the solution is more abstract, at the information architecture level, not screen layouts.

UPDATE 2
Some layouts:

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