The Multimedia Lesson allows you to include websites, and embed content already hosted elsewhere online, directly within your Thinkific course.
In this article:
Common Ways 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
Common Ways to Use a Multimedia Lesson
This is an extremely versatile lesson type that you can use for embedding all kinds of things 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 by, well, trying it out! (instructions below).
You can also use this free tool to confirm whether or not the content is iframeable.
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 Pro 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 a webinar link, survey, Google doc, or YouTube videos!
Alternatively, you can upload a file if you have 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
File Preparation
Before uploading your content to Thinkific, these files must be exported for web (HTML5). Only .zip files are supported. Uploading your own content is typically used for adding Articulate, Storyline or iSpring content into your course and you can learn how to export your file correctly HERE.
Make sure that your zip file does not contain the content in a folder in the zip file - all 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 (normally your index.html or story.html file) and you should not need to open a folder to find that HTML file.
Here is an example of how to compress your files into a .zip file on Mac OS:
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.
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 HERE.
Dynamic Variables for Multimedia Lessons
Passing user variables to your Multimedia Lessons is a useful tool in a variety of circumstances, whether you want to pass values to a hidden field in an external form/survey/test, or using 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 a 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, and the value is the dynamic variable itself. You can add multiple parameters by separating them with an &
Because the value is dynamic and changes based on the student viewing your course, we need to set the value when the course is loaded. We will use a placeholder - {{value}} - to identify the location in the URL where we 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 would appear like this
https://typeform.com/your-form?name=john&email=jdoe@email.com
When structured this way, your multimedia lesson will have access to use both name, and email as variables to do with what you'd like.
The URL that you are passing the values to must supported parameters in some way. If they are not prepared for don't recognize the data being passed, it won't have any effect.
Available variables:
These are the available 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 |
Lesson not working? Check out our troubleshooting guide here.