How can I actually use Library content in a Course?

Educators Authoring
1

I’ve created a simple Library with content about how to set up labs. I created 2 Text Components within that Library to hold the instructions. I want to now reference those two Text Components in multiple Courses. How can I do this? I can’t actually see any way to do that, and it doesn’t say anything about using the content in a class here, only creating it and sharing it: 8.5. Working with Content Libraries — Building and Running an Open edX Course documentation

2

Oh wow…just found this…
https://edx.readthedocs.io/projects/open-edx-building-and-running-a-course/en/latest/exercises_tools/randomized_content_blocks.html#enable-content-libraries

Are you telling me the point of Libraries is not to share common material between classes, but only to share common quiz questions? So basically if I want to use this for inter-class common material, I need to create Libraries with one piece of content per Library and then select a “randomized” content block which is picking from 1 of 1 pieces of content?

Is there some better way to share materials between classes and between instructors? This will kind of work, but it’s also kind of janky!

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3

Hi @oedx,

Yes unfortunately the function of the libraries is not to share common material between classes.

Until someone develops a way to easily do this from inside Open edX® Studio, there is a manual method you can try.

Appsembler wrote a good article on how to do this manually:

4

That’s true. But there’s a project going on right now that addresses this very issue. We’re calling them Content Libraries. They’ll use Blockstore as a backend, and the authoring UI will be exposed via a new MFE, frontend-app-library-authoring. Check out the Building with Blockstore video for more context on both the motivation and tech.

As you’ll see if you try Content Libraries in their current state, they’re not ready for production use. But we hope they will be by Maple.

2 Likes
5

Hi @arbrandes and @oedx

It looks like the non-randomised Library Sourced Block is ready for use?!

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Yes, in the sense that this implementation you found exists. The Big But is that it’s considered experimental and unsupported, and could be replaced at any time with something different. (As a matter of fact, I’m pretty confident it will be, at some point.)

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Thank you so much @arbrandes !

1 Like