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al56932796
al56932796
Participating Frequently
March 14, 2017
Answered

Course information recording in the LMS

  • March 14, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 530 views

Hi,

I know this has been covered in various discussions, but I can't quite work this out. Apologies for the very wordy post!

I have to produce courses, using C9, that are 1 hour long (legislation demands our users sit through a 1 hour course). Lets say there are 60 slides of content. Each slide is timed for 60 seconds, and users press play once it appears on the playbar, to move to the next slide. The course isn't allowed to run without interaction, to avoid users starting it, going off for a coffee, and returning an hour later. I then include a final slide timed for a few seconds, as it was failing to record completion in the LMS, so the reporting is set to slide views (total number minus 1, so 60 in this case).

To qualify for the course, users must simply watch the 60 slides, and then complete a short quiz, which is held directly in the LMS (litmos).

Users should be able to leave the course and return to their place. I have 'send data on every slide' checked, and 'escape version and session ID' (although I've honestly no idea what this second thing does). Never Send Resume Data is not checked.

Once the course is complete, users should be able to access previously visited slides for information. Under TOC settings, I have 'enable navigation' and 'navigate visited slides only' checked. I also have self-paced learning, but I understand this is pointless for a SCORM file going into an LMS. I assume it is not, however, detrimental to the outcome.

I have run the latest course through SCORM Cloud and completion_status is complete. Exit is ‘suspend’. Lilybiri suggested to a previous user to include a button to exit the course, but if I do this, the user is logged out of the course within the LMS and has to log back in to complete the quiz module, which was also causing some problems with users. 

So, my questions are:

1.   Can I adjust settings in the course to give the LMS sufficient information to produce a percentage of slides viewed? I only get complete or incomplete. I sometimes have users report they’ve watched them all but its stuck at the end, and I can’t tell if that is true or not.

2.     I just loaded a test course into the LMS (courses is loaded as a zip, SCORM 1.2), ran through all the slides over an hour in Chrome (on a mac), completed it and exited. On returning to the course in Safari, the TOC was showing the second slide only as having been viewed when I hovered over it (the slide title highlights), and a tick only appeared next to the second slide. A similar test course only showed the second half of the course had been watched, which is impossible. We ask users to ensure cookies are enabled, but surely the LMS and the C9 course combined should be recording this data accurately if I’ve set it up properly?

I have discussed with the LMS provider but I'd like to double check I'm doing all I can correctly.

Thank you.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer RodWard

    I would not be basing completion on slide views in this case.

    If you have a button on each slide that the learner is required to click to advance to the next slide, and you set that button to report to the quiz as a scored object with a score of 1 point,  Then you have a 'quiz' with a total of 60 points.

    Set the quiz percentage required as 100 percent (or set number of points to pass as 60) and then the only way your learner can pass the module is by clicking each and every button at the end of each of the 60 slides.

    3 replies

    al56932796
    al56932796Author
    Participating Frequently
    March 16, 2017

    Thank you both for your invaluable advice, as always. 

    I am adding next buttons to all my courses and will keep testing. I don't believe my LMS supports SCORM 2004, but in any case, I have more information now to discuss with them further and will test both versions. I will need to leave the playbar to show progress and clearly show the TOC button - as its an hour long our users have previously complained if they can't easily see how far through they have gone (which I can understand), and I've added some javascript (thanks to another source - I wouldn't have known where to start) to prevent the users from dragging the pointer forward.

    RodWard
    Community Expert
    RodWardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 16, 2017

    It's generally acknowledged now that adult learners are expecting shorter lesson module durations. 

    In my experience 60 minutes is far too long.  10-15 minutes for some people is even too long, but I generally find you can get away with it.

    My suggestion would be to break your 60 minute course into a half dozen modules and bundle them together using the Multi-SCORM Packager tool.  You can use either SCORM 2004 or SCORM 1.2 (if your LMS doesn't support the later version).

    This allows the learners to do as little as one 10-minute module at a time, or the entire course in one go if they want.  The LMS SCORM Player TOC should show them how many modules they have attempted and completed.  So this provides an easy way for the learners to see their progress displayed graphically.  This approach also gives you the ability to include short quizzes in each module.  If the entire course is one big 60-minute project file you only get one quiz.

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    March 14, 2017

    My suggestion worked for the client, but the quiz slides were included in the total time. It should be perfectly possible to do it in your case as well, but since you keep to having all slides set to 60 secs (which I personally would never do), seems to be superfluous to suggest it anymore. You can have a combination of a variable that is toggled to 1, when the required viewing time has been reached and show either a scored Exit or a non-scored Exit button ​after the Quiz. I never told that the exit button has to be just after the content slides.

    RodWard
    Community Expert
    RodWardCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    March 14, 2017

    I would not be basing completion on slide views in this case.

    If you have a button on each slide that the learner is required to click to advance to the next slide, and you set that button to report to the quiz as a scored object with a score of 1 point,  Then you have a 'quiz' with a total of 60 points.

    Set the quiz percentage required as 100 percent (or set number of points to pass as 60) and then the only way your learner can pass the module is by clicking each and every button at the end of each of the 60 slides.

    al56932796
    al56932796Author
    Participating Frequently
    March 14, 2017

    OK thanks Rod.

    So as I understand it, that should solve the problem of reporting percentage completion in the LMS - I would adjust quiz reporting setting to just 'Quiz is Passed'. I assume I will then remove the play button from the playbar altogether (it was timed to appear before) - I have already removed forward and the progress bar to prevent users skipping forward before the time is reached.

    In terms of navigating back to previously viewed slides via the TOC, will this issue be fixed too? I can't get my head around how it all reports back into the LMS.

    RodWard
    Community Expert
    RodWardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 14, 2017

    If you've already removed so many buttons from the playbar I don't personally see the reason for having it at all.

    As for your TOC, I suggest you reset it.  The issue with not marking all visited slides as being done might simply be due to some glitch.

    Another thing to try is to use SCORM 2004 instead of 1.2.  It could be that your course is currently overloading the rather smallish Resume Data buffer that SCORM 1.2 allows.

    To check whether this issue is more a problem of the LMS rather than your Captivate module, try loading both versions of the course to SCORM Cloud and see whether the behaviour is different from that LMS.

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