Suspend Data problems

[rw-media]

First off - I'm very new to SCORM, LMS or anything of that sort.  I know very, very little about it.

We sent our module off to the client to implement in their LMS - everything went perfectly well, except we received a complaint about our suspend data & the way the user's progression is being tracked.  Essentially, it's either not tracked or tracked in a strange way.

Basically, all we need to track is the user's progression in the slides so that we can a) ensure they viewed all the slides b) return to the module and continue viewing, if they interrupt their viewing of the course.

There are quiz questions, but the answers do not need to be tracked.

My questions would be a) we've filled out the SCORM manifest & other e-Leaning options based on the client's wishes and what their LMS requires, my assumption would be that progression and tracking would be handled without any further customization on our part, is that an incorrect assumption? b) I noticed that two of our quiz questions were still reporting to a quiz, they should not be, we will re-publish and test again, but it will be at least a day before we have feedback, I'm wondering - could this issue alone cause the suspend data problems?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated -

[RhondaKiser]

In the LMS that we are using, there are 3 options once a scorm-based lesson is uploaded.  Here's what my LMS shows:

When re-launching a previously exited lesson, should the LMS provide resume data or restart the lesson? Note that only data that is saved by the lesson is available to be resumed.

Do not specify (lesson code will decide).
Always provide resume data.
Always restart the lesson (never provide resume data).

"Do not specify" is selected by default.  I've found that no matter what I choose in Captivate, I always have to modify the lesson in the LMS and select "Always provide resume data".

[www_cpguru_com]

You don't write what the suspend_data problems are so it's a bit difficult to suggest a solution. However, many LMS' have issues with the large amount of suspend_data sent from Captivate and that can cause lag and weird behaviour. Unless you are specifically using the data stored in suspend_data for something then it's better to just not send it at all. This can be changed by setting the Reporting Level to Report Score instead of Interactions and score.

Also - if you only need to track that the user viewed all the slides then the Choose Report Data should be set to Slide views only.

The "bookmark" feature in Captivate is self-contained so there should be no need to change any settings in the LMS.

/Michael

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Visit my Captivate blog with tips & tricks, tutorials and Widgets.

[rw-media]

Thanks for the replies.

I'll know more about the specific suspend data problem when we speak w/ the client, but I think the Reporting Level could have something to do with it.

The only specific I know about the suspend data is that it is being read as: "W1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP1Enone%24nP0E"

I'm not sure what to make of that, and the client hasn't given us his interpretation of that yet, so I won't know more until we speak with him"

Thanks again to both of you for the input -

[EmeraldEducationSystems]

Why is the bookmark feature self-contained?  If the bookmarks aren't retained between visits, what use are they?

[Erik Lord]

My bet is the lesson isn't resuming where the user last exited the lesson.

Captivate does use the SCORM lesson_location value correctly, but it doesn't set the resume status properly. This isn't a problem with LMS productst that don't care; a more sloppy interpretation may have the LMS send the suspend/location data back any time the lesson is relaunched. However, per SCORM spec, that should ONLY happen if the 'entry' (I think it is) status is 'resume'. If it's not, the LMS should not send back that data.

So an LMS that adheres to that spec does not send the resume data back to the CP lesson when it's relaunched, so it doesn't resume. If CP set the 'ab initio' status properly on first run, then the 'resume' status properly exit (if not complete), the LMS would hand that data back and CP could resume properly.

This is why some LMS products, as Rhonda mentions, allow you to override that spec in the lesson properties.

SO if this is the issue, ask your client if their LMS has that option. If not, you may be able to hack the CP HTML to send that status every time...but that gets a bit more complex (and I don't know that detail offhand).

Michael's suggestions are certainly worth trying, especially depending on what exactly the customer's complain is...and though I agree the bookmark feature is self-contained, it's definitely not implemented properly.

HTH!

Erik

[rw-media]

Thanks for the feedback Erick, its certainly helpful - now when we go to talk to the client, we'll actually have some idea of what we're talking about & know what issues to bring up

[rw-media]

Just as a follow up:

The client hasn't had time to discuss this issue with us yet, so we're still researching without the ability to test our output in the client's LMS - we did have one further test, which didn't have much better results - suspend data was still not what the client was used to seeing, completion/incompletion was not being recorded, and the quiz was being graded despite there being no quiz questions set to report and us only specifiying in the SCORM preferences to only report slide views...

Again, our goal is to make the enduser view every slide - we do have quiz questions, but these are not meant to be graded/reported or influence the enduser's completion of the course.

For SCORM output options, we selected Slide Views Only and set to 100%.  Based on my reading of old posts on this forums, I know see this seems to not work as advertised.  I've read suggestions that a) I should set the % to lower than 100 (arbitrarily, it seems) b) one user claimed Captivate reports the slide views only in intervals of 10 (can't confirm that one) c) that I should just put a button (which reports with any interactivity on the first page so that the LMS is initialized, and set the score to 0 d) that i put reporting buttons on the first and last slide

Any thoughts on these suggestions from those with more experience?

Also, does anyone know when a slide is marked as viewed? (is it when its first opened, when its completed?  if the latter, if I have a continue button towards the end of the slide that the user clicks, will that result in the slide being toggled as viewed?  or will it not?)

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

I wouldn't dare to answer about the real SCORM problems (lucky to have everything working with our LMS), but one of your last questions was: when is a slide marked as viewed? If the same system variable is used there (not sure at all) as in the TOC, where you can have slides marked after viewing, they are marked as complete only after viewing the entire slide (timeline has to be completed). You could perhaps try a test with the TOC to detect which slides are not completely viewed?

Sincerely hope that one of the SCORM-gurus can help you out.

Lilybiri

[Erik Lord · Accepted solution]

Been a while. Apologies if this is too late or issues are resolved.

For the first part, what suspend_data would the customer be "used to seeing". That's an odd claim as most users have no idea what suspend_data is much less how it should actually look! I suspect you mean the results when the lesson is resumed is not what is expected....and if that's the case, what's the specific, unexpected result?

As replied, for a slide to be 'complete' it has to play all the way through, so if you have, say, audio in there but are not waiting for the audio to play to the end, the slide then doesn't get to the end, so it's not 'complete'....

Quiz was being graded...how? If you've got Quiz Slides in there, I don't think you can force them to not be graded (though maybe you can, I've never tried). If not Quiz Slides and they are hand-built quizzes, as you SURE there are not interactions marked to be reported? Best way to check that is to select

Project > Advanced Interaction

and see if any of those interactions have 'Track Score' enabled.

If you can get nothing to report for the 'quiz' but can't get slide completions to report properly, then my suggestion is your 'c)' option. A scored button at the end that says something like 'Click Here to Complete the Lesson' often works best. One scored interaction, reporting completion and score at 100%...with just one tracked interaction, they should get 100% by clicking that button. That also can offer a way for suspend_data to be resolved...rumors have it that including a tracked interaction can help with such issues...

HTH!
Erik

[rw-media]

Thanks to both Lilybri & Erik for their responses & for helping.

Lilybri - for the TOC issue, I ran a test and it seems as if slides are marked as completed when the Continue button we've placed at the end of each slide is clicked.  I agree its a safe assumption to believe the LMS views slide completion the same way.  Though Erik raises an interesting point about audio needing to be completed in order for the slide to receive a check - in our case, the Continue button should appear after the audio is done in each instance, but that may not be 100% true throughout, I'll have to look.

Erik - in the last module we've sent, we did in fact use the logic you refer to and go with the idea of just putting one interactive button (in our case, we went with two, first slide, and second to last slide) in the module.  Unfortunately, our client has been away for the Holidays, and its now been about 3 weeks (since I first posted this query) that we've received any feedback...so we're working blind a little bit here.  Hopefully, I'll have feedback very soon that I can share that can be of help to others in similar situations in the future.

[rw-media]

So thanks to everyone for their input on this thread.  Looks like everything is solved for the client, they finally got back to us today.

So, for future reference for anyone with similar problems, it looks like putting an interactive reporting button on the first and/or 2nd to last slide (we did both) solves tracking issues.

Our client had one further question, which was to ask if there was anyway to have the cmi.success_status carry the same value as the cmi.completion_status.  I don't think Captivate has anything that would deal with it, as far as I've learned, so I'm leaning towards just saying that's out of our capabilities.  I'm just happy we got all the tracking, completion status and whatnot working.  For someone who had never implemented one of our captivate projects through an LMS, that was huge.  Thanks again for all the insights here.

[Erik Lord]

completion_status is SCORM 1.2 and 2004.

success_status is only SCORM 2004.

So with 1.2 lessons, if the LMS wants to show both 'completion' and 'success', you're only going to see one of them...depending on how it handles the data the lesson sends it...because 1.2 lessons can only show 'completion_status.

For example, our LMS shows both the completion and success status of a lesson to the user regardless of whether it's 1.2 or 2004.

If the lesson is 1.2 and sets completion_status to 'completed' or 'incomplete', our LMS will show that result in the 'completion' section of the status report and the 'success' section will show 'unknown'.

If the lesson is 1.2 and sets completion_status to 'passed' or 'failed', our LMS will show that results in the 'success' section of the status report and the 'completion' status will show 'unknown'.

At any rate...

In order for your lesson to set both completion and success statuses, you'd have to make your lesson SCORM 1.3 (2004) and set the appropriate settings.

HTH, and glad the other issue is resolved!

Erik

[rw-media]

Erik - As always, appreciate the response.  That explains a lot - it's quite possible that our clients have upgraded from 1.2 to 2004.  They said their goal was to do that sometime this year, its possible they upgraded without letting us know.  That would explain why they are looking for both variables...