What you can download from a course, and what you cannot

Can I download course lessons to watch offline, and what can I download from a course?

Lessons cannot be downloaded. Course video is stream-only, there is no offline mode, and the player has no control that saves a file. What you can take away is whatever the course author attached to a lesson as a file, and your certificate once you have earned one.

Video stays on the site

Course video is delivered in pieces from a distribution that only answers requests your browser has been authorised for, and that authorisation lasts six hours at a time. There is no download button, and an address copied out of the player stops working. If a video stops mid-session, see course video stops playing after a few hours.

Reading lessons work the same way. There is no export, so use your browser's print or save-as-PDF if you want the text for yourself.

Lesson resources are the part you can keep

A lesson can carry resources the author added: files, links, or both. When a lesson has them, a Resources section appears with it, and a lesson the author attached nothing to has no such section. Files download under their original name. Links open the site they point at.

Two rules govern the files:

  1. The download address is signed when the lesson page loads and lasts 15 minutes. Select the file and it downloads. Leave the tab sitting open for an hour first and the download fails: reload the lesson and select it again.
  2. The address cannot be passed on. Sent to somebody else it is dead within 15 minutes, and getting a live one requires access to the lesson.

You need access to the lesson to see its resources at all. On a paid or members-only course that means the entitlement, which is a separate thing from the enrolment that records your progress: enrolling versus watching.

Your certificate

Completing a course issues a certificate on its own page, which carries a Print / Download button and saves through your browser as a PDF. Course certificates covers where to find it and what it shows.

Notes, quizzes and assignments

Your lesson notes stay in the lesson and have no export, so copy anything you want to keep elsewhere. Quiz and exam papers are not downloadable in any form. Files you uploaded to an assignment are yours, but keep your own copy: a submission is a record for grading rather than a place to store work.