Topics Map > Media Delivery > Engage
Engage - Using the Offline feature to read offline [UW-Madison]
This document outlines how to use Engage's Offline feature and certain issues you may encounter with it.
Engage is primarily meant to be used while connected to the Internet but includes a feature for offline reading for smaller documents. The Offline feature lets you read your course material when you don't have internet access, whether over only a brief moment of lost connectivity or an extended time off-line that you planned for in advance. Offline in Engage is currently supported by the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers used on the desktop.
-
When logged into Engage, select Main Menu (hamburger) icon, and then Offline:
-
A list of sections will appear; click the slider to choose that section to download. You can Select All if you wish to download the entire eText for offline reading.
-
When you’ve selected everything you’d like downloaded, click Download.
-
An indicator will appear showing the progress of the download. This process may take a while and the course material content can take up a lot of storage on your computer.
-
If you’d like to create a new offline session, or if you wish to remove the download, you can click Clear Session.
More detailed instructions can be found in Unizin's Engage documentation. There is also a known issue where larger eTexts may stall when downloading. For more information please see the Known issue below
Engage - Known Issue - Offline reading download stalls
The Engage eText tool works best when accessed via Chrome or Firefox on a computer with an internet connection in order to access all its features.
When attempting to read an Engage eText offline, the keep on device download stalls for large Engage eTexts. The progress indicator simply stops moving after a few minutes when attempting to download larger eTexts. The download can be started again by toggling the keep on device option, but it is not clear how many times you may need to do this to complete a download. The keep on device feature does still work for files under 14 MB.
Affects
This issue affects all users on all browsers on all operating systems.
Workaround
For reading offline, it is recommended that you use the print feature to create a PDF of the Engage eText. You can print up to 50 pages of the eText at one time. If you wish to print the entire eText for offline reading, you can print pages 1-50, 51-100, 101-150, and so on. This will not allow you to sync highlighting, annotations, and questions with Engage when you regain an internet connection.
It is worth noting that downloading can be slow, depending on how many pages are being downloaded at once.