Using a variable to block access to a course

I have found that if I get my Evolve course to open in a new window, then it is very easy to copy the URL for that window and show it on another browser/device without the user being registered on the LMS. Clearly this is a security issue that is in part due to the platform but maybe also due to Evolve. Another tool I use blocks access to the course if I do the same trick of copying the URL.

So I thought about trying to set a trigger to hide pages if the studentname was blank but it is not working.

I am sucessfully grabbing the student name from my LMS and it displays perfectly in the Download extension and elsewhere in course. However, when viewed from the pasted URL, that variable is not visible. So I have an easy way of knowing if the viewer is ‘legal’ or not. But how to block access if the user name is not visible?

I tried using the trigger ‘variable changed’ but it is not working. I set a default value for studentname to ‘student’ and then tried setting a trigger, if variable = student, hide pages etc but still no good.

Does anyone have any tips on how to block access to the course using triggers if they aren’t viewing from my LMS?

Thanks

So I was able to answer my own question. Yes, you can use variables and triggers to protect your content if it is not being read off a compatible LMS.

My LMS is sending the student name to Evolve and Evolve can read this and act accordingly. I did find that triggers were not consistent but I found that hiding pages and then getting a trigger to show those pages if the variable was not the default worked.

Basically, my Evolve course will not run unless it is run directly from LMS as a registered user which can then feed a student name to it. :slightly_smiling_face:

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