I finally figured out that you have changed what used to be a default action. In order to get the "eye" icon in the front, the user has to click an icon in the lesson on the bottom left first.
Your previous default behaviour was that the lesson was marked "read" after clicking the lesson link.
Is there a way to get back to this default behaviour?
There is no indication that I can see to tell me what the icon on the bottom left does. I just clicked on it to see what happens.