found the answer in the MDL-36877 patch, a commented out section, if you add the code below to mod/lesson/view.php it will redirect to course page, but only if show grades is off, if show grades is on, then users will see the end of lesson page. I have confirmed that the code modification will work in Moodle 3.2.
if (!$course->showgrades) {
redirect(new moodle_url('/course/view.php', array('id'=>$course->id)));
}
I find that turning of the 'end of lesson page' is a convenient feature and improves Moodle's UI, giving students less clicks, and not providing unnecessary ones. A greater improvement would be to make the redirect to another activity be automatic rather than force the user to click a link.