Embedding a Google Drive File in Your Course#

To embed a Google Drive file in your course, follow these steps.

Enable the Google Drive Files Tool#

Before you can add Google Drive files to your course, you must enable the Google Drive tool in Studio or OLX (open learning XML).

To enable the Google Drive tool in Studio, you add the "google-document" key to the Advanced Module List on the Advanced Settings page. For more information, see Enabling Additional Exercises and Tools.

Alternatively, you can use OLX to enable the Google Drive tool.

Enable Google Drive Files in OLX#

To enable Google Drive files in your course, you edit the XML file that defines the course structure. You locate the course element’s advanced-modules attribute, and add the string google-document to it.

For example, the following XML code enables Google Drive files in a course. It also enables Google calendars.

<course advanced_modules="[&quot;google-document&quot;,
    &quot;google-calendar&quot;]" display_name="Sample Course"
    start="2014-01-01T00:00:00Z">
    ...
</course>

For more information, see OLX Course Building Blocks in the EdX Open Learning XML Guide.

Publish the Google Drive File and Obtain the Embed Code#

Before you can add a Google Drive file to your course, you must publish the file to the web and obtain the embed code for the file.

Important

The task described in this section relies on the use of third-party software. Because the software is subject to change by its owner, the steps provided here are intended as guidelines and not as an exact procedure.

  1. Open the Google Drive file.

  2. From the File menu, select Publish to the web.

    The Google Drive file Publish to the web dialog box.
  3. Select Publish, and then select OK to confirm the action.

  4. Select the Embed tab.

    The Google Drive file Publish to web Embed tab
  5. Copy the complete string in the Embed field, including the <iframe> tags.

    Note

    Google images do not have an <iframe> tag. To embed an image, you copy the complete img tag.

    You use that string to configure the Google Drive file component.