The Audio lecture type

The Audio lecture presents a sound track within the lecture itself, with a cover image in the background and the playback controls overlaid on it. Use it for a podcast, an interview, a narration or an excerpt of a recorded class - any content meant to be listened to.

Adding the lecture

In the modular content editor, click Add new lecture to this topic and choose Audio, in the Media and integrations section of the type picker.
Upload the file, or enter the URL of a Hosted file (see below).
Optionally, upload an Audio cover image - the image shown beside the player while the audio plays, for example the episode cover or a photo of the speaker. Without a cover, the slide shows only the player.
Check whichever options apply: Block progress until the audio is fully listened to, Autoplay, and, when the institution also allows playback speed, Do not allow changing the playback speed (see the sections below).

Uploading the audio

The field accepts two sources, switched with the Upload and Hosted file buttons - the same mechanism used by other file-based lecture types:

Upload: sends a file from the computer. Accepted formats: MP3, MP4, WAV, OGG, AIFF, ALAC, AAC, M4A, 3GP and WMA - prefer MP3, which plays in every browser. The maximum size is under 250 MB (see the table in Video and image formats).
Hosted file: instead of uploading a file, enter the URL of an audio file already published somewhere else.

How the participant interacts

The cover art fills the center of the slide, with the playback controls overlaid on it:

A play/pause button in the center, a rewind 10 seconds button on the left, and a forward 10 seconds button on the right.
A progress bar along the bottom of the cover, with the elapsed time, the total duration, mute/volume controls, and - when the institution allows it - the playback speed menu.
When the participant’s browser cannot assemble this player, the audio plays with the browser’s own native controls, without the cover and the custom frame.

The point where the participant stopped is saved automatically and resumed on the next visit to the lecture. Once the track finishes, it starts over on the next visit. This progress is recorded on the participant’s enrollment, not in the browser - resetting the enrollment also resets the point where they had stopped.

Block progress until the audio is fully listened to

Checking Block progress until the audio is fully listened to keeps the NEXT button disabled until the participant reaches the end of the track. They can pause and rewind freely, but cannot skip ahead by dragging the bar past the point they already listened to - trying to do so sends playback back to where they had stopped. Once the track has been listened to the end once, the slide stays unlocked on later visits, even if playback starts over from the beginning.

Autoplay

Checking Autoplay makes the audio start playing as soon as the participant reaches the slide - with sound, not muted. Some browsers may still block autoplay, since they require some user interaction before playing sound on their own; in that case the participant only needs to click the play button, which is always visible.

Playback speed

By default, the participant can change the audio’s playback speed from the player itself. The Do not allow changing the playback speed option, when available, disables that control only on this slide. See Content types for the two levels of control (institution and slide) and the allowed speed ranges.