Context for panel not activating for custom menu item
I like to test a panel answer before I post it, but will be gone for a couple days, so I'll give you my speculation on what may be causing this.  I suspect your page panel path is /course/%course and so that is the only path that is intercepted.  It does not matter that you have a variant for resources because it never gets tested. The basic panel definition has already rejected it.  Try changing the basic path to /course/%course/!other.  The !other variable is optional so the panel should intercept 2 and 3 level paths matching the pattern.  Your variant should then be triggered.

The variable labels in the path (%course &amp; !other) are used to identify associated contexts listed on the context/relationships tab for defining the variant and the specific label name does not matter.  Hope this works. If not, I'll check back in a couple days.