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.
"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