How to find the public URL to link to a specific unit in a subsection?

I recently noticed that when I have 5 units in a subsection, the URL in the browser bar always points to the first unit in the section. How can I get a link to the 3rd unit for instance?

I can reproduce what you’re seeing on courses.edx.org, using the “old” experience: If I copy the URL, browse to a different unit, and then visit the saved-off URL, I end up on the last unit I was viewing, rather the the unit whose URL I saved off. (As you say, the URL doesn’t change.)

However, when I use the new Learning MFE (learning.edx.org) I see the desired behavior – each unit has a unique URL for deeplinking. I’m not sure if the new Learning MFE is available in your deployment, though.

I haven’t looked much at the relevant code, but just from experimentation, I think think there’s a way you can do it in the old experience. The URLs look like this:

https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:[COURSE_NAME]/courseware/[CHAPTER]/[SECTION]/[POSITION]?activate_block_id=[SOME_BLOCK_ID]

(I think I found the relevant URL binding.)

That “position” field at the end of the path is an integer, and it appears you can set it to whichever unit you want. E.g. a position of 5 shows the 5th unit in the section. (I think you can drop the activate_block_id part. Not sure what it does.)

I should also clarify that I’m looking for not just myself being capable of generating the URL, but a student too (so they can send a pointer to the instructor with which video they’re talking about.) While I know how to find the block ID as an instructor, it’s not clear to me how a student could actually find it?

Also I’m using Tutor with Lilac. Under what conditions would the “new learning MFE” be available?

(Also interestingly no content shows up for me if I go to https://learning.edx.org/)

The student wouldn’t need to know about block IDs, just how to change .../1 to .../5 – but yes, anything involving asking someone to edit URLs is not a very good workaround. :-/

I found a thread about the Learning microfrontend and Tutor: How to use learning MFE on tutor - Tutor - Overhang.IO – looks like it might become available in the Maple release (which should be coming out around December 9.) A bit more about it – it’s the new UI for the course experience, and people can toggle back and forth between that and the old UI.

(I don’t know if the inability to deeplink to a unit in the old UI is a regression or just a missing feature, but at a guess I’d say that waiting for Maple to come out may be your best bet.)

The workaround I ultimately used is that if people want to get a link to the exact page, they create a comment on the discussion forum on that page. The bottom of their comment then has a link back to the exact page. A pretty ugly workaround, but it works.

simpler : edit the page in Studio and use the link provided on “aperçu réel” (or the same in you language)

"I should also clarify that I’m looking for not just myself being capable of generating the URL, but a student too (so they can send a pointer to the instructor with which video they’re talking about.) "

Its so simpler than you guys think . just to the instructions in this link