- Why do my students receive a "403 Forbidden error" when accessing the movie link?
K-12 student accounts are granted a “basic” level of permissions for Digital Campus portals. This means that students can access video streams only. If they navigate away from a video stream, even unintentionally, this will result in a 403 Forbidden error. For this reason it’s really important that students begin the process with a properly formatted Direct Watch link. Here is an example link –
A Midsummer Night's Dream
https://digitalcampus.swankmp.net/hawaiidoe371275/watch?token=4FF053E26619F972
Any link used by a student that does not follow the syntax of the link above will result in a 403 Forbidden error. One easy way of identifying invalid links would be the lack of the word “token” as it appears in the link above. If the link being used by students does not include the word “token,” it is not considered to be a valid Direct Watch link. I have submitted a request to our development team to present more information in place of the 403 forbidden message. In a future update, students who encounter this message should see:
- An explanation of the error
- A suggestion on whom to contact for a valid Direct Watch link
- The opportunity to log out of the site
NOTE 1: Video streams will play back in full-screen mode for students. If the video fails to play for some reason, this can appear as a black screen or browser window. If the video is failing to play I would suspect that either a required network end-point is not reachable or there may be an issue with the affected browser. Further troubleshooting may be needed.
NOTE 2: This issue can affect instructors who have previously logged in using a student account for testing purposes. The solution to this is to log back into the site using a Teacher account here –https://digitalcampus.swankmp.net/hawaiidoe371275/admin
A user can also effectively “log out” by clearing their browser cache and cookies. If an instructor wishes to test logging in as a student, we advise carrying out that testing in an Incognito or Private Browsing window. This ensures that the login cookies are not retained when the browser window is closed.
I hope this information is helpful to you. Please take a look at the troubleshooting suggestions above and let us know what you find. Thanks for your help and we look forward to hearing from you.
HIDOE Library Support Center