The Multimedia Lesson type allows you to include websites, and embed externally hosted content directly within your Thinkific course!
In this article:
How to Use a Multimedia Lesson
Create a Multimedia Lesson Using Externally Hosted Content
Create a Multimedia Lesson By Uploading Content
Testing Your Multimedia Lesson
Dynamic Variables for Multimedia Lessons
How to Use a Multimedia Lesson
This is an extremely versatile lesson type that you can use to embed a variety of media into your course, including:
- Webinar tools
- Surveys (e.g. Typeform)
- Appointment booking tools (e.g. Calendly)
- Presentations (e.g. Prezi)
- Google Docs (make sure to allow iframing)
- YouTube videos
- Articulate Storyline and Adobe Captivate files
...and much more!
Before Getting Started
The Multimedia lesson type uses an iframe to embed the content into your course, so in order for something to work as a Multimedia lesson it must be "iframeable".
The best way to test whether your content will work as a Multimedia lesson is to try it out (you can follow the instructions below), but you can also use this free tool to confirm whether or not the content is iframe compatible.
If you are using Articulate Rise 360, they will no longer support iframing as of April 2020. This means you must use our upload content option to host your Rise content on Thinkific servers instead of using the Rise share link. Click here for more information.
Content Options
When creating a Multimedia lesson, you have the following content options:
- Use externally hosted content (Available on all plans)
- Upload content file (Available on Start or higher)
For externally hosted content, a URL can be added to the Multimedia lesson in order to display the content within your course. This is great for things like webinar links, surveys, Google docs, or YouTube videos.
Alternatively, you can upload a file with your created interactive content that has been exported for web. Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline or iSpring content can easily be included in your Thinkific course this way.
Create a Multimedia Lesson Using Externally Hosted Content
- Go to Manage Learning Content
- Select Courses
- Click on the course you would like to add the lesson to
- You will now be in the Course Curriculum area of the Course Builder
- On the left-hand side, click Add Lesson
- Select Multimedia Lesson
- Name the Lesson Title as desired
- Make sure Use externally hosted content is selected
- Add your URL (Make sure your URL includes https if you have SSL enabled)
- Click Save
Create a Multimedia Lesson By Uploading Content
Uploading content to host with Thinkific is available on our Start plan and higher.
File Preparation
Before uploading your content to Thinkific, you will need to export your files for web (HTML5) - only .zip files are supported.
The option to upload your own content can be used to add Articulate, Storyline or iSpring content into your course - you can learn how to export your file correctly in our article "Importing Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and Other Multimedia Content to Your Course".
Make sure that your zip file does not contain the content in a folder in the zip file: all of the content should be available in the root directory. What this means is that as soon as you open your zip file, you should see an HTML file (usually titled index.html or story.html). You should not need to open another folder to find that HTML file.
To compress your files into a .zip file on Mac OS, select all of the files and right click to select "compress x items" (the number of items you have selected will be noted).
Create a Multimedia Lesson By Uploading Content
- Go to Manage Learning Content
- Select Courses
- Click on the course you would like to add the lesson to
- You will now be in the Course Curriculum area of the Course Builder
- On the left-hand side, click Add Lesson
- Select Multimedia Lesson
- Name the Lesson Title as desired
- Select Upload content file (.zip)
- Click Upload File
- Drag and drop your file or Select a file from your computer
- Wait for the file to finish processing
- Select the HTML file that should be used for the content (typically named index.html or story.html)
- Click Save
The maximum upload file size is 200MB. If you have a larger file, please let us know and we can provide some alternate options.
Testing Your Multimedia Lesson
Once you have created your Multimedia lesson, we recommend previewing your course as a student to make sure it is loading as expected.
If you have any issues, check out our troubleshooting guide.
Dynamic Variables for Multimedia Lessons
Passing user variables to your Multimedia Lessons is a useful tool for a variety of circumstances; whether you want to pass values to a hidden field in an external form/survey/test, or use it for your metrics and tracking. This can easily be done by turning on Add dynamic variables to the URL in the Multimedia Lesson editor and start passing it values.
Proper URL formatting
The key to ensuring that this feature works as expected is to format the URL for your lesson using proper URL structure.
In most cases, you should pass user variables in the form of URL Parameters. To use parameters properly, ensure that they are placed at the end of your URL, behind a ?, and that they are structured as a key=value pair.
- The key is the name of the variable that you want to pass
- the value is the dynamic variable itself
- You can add multiple parameters by separating them with an & symbol
Because the value is dynamic and changes based on the student viewing your course, you will need to set the value when the course is loaded. You will use a placeholder - {{value}} - to identify the location in the URL where you will add the value when the course is loaded.
Take this example URL:
https://typeform.com/your-form?name={{first_name}}&email={{email}}
When it loads in the Course Player, it will look like this:
https://typeform.com/your-form?name=john&email=jdoe@email.com
When structured this way, your multimedia lesson will have access to both name and email as variables to use.
The URL that you are passing the values to must support parameters in some way. If they are not prepared for, or don't recognize the data being passed, this won't have any effect.
Available variables:
These are the variables that you can currently pass using this feature:
| {{first_name}} | The first name of the student viewing the lesson |
| {{last_name}} | The last name of the student viewing the lesson |
| {{email}} | The email of the student viewing the lesson |
| {{date_created}} | The date that the student's account was created |
More
Is your lesson still not working? Check out Why is my Multimedia Lesson not working?