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jeffcaddick10006700
Inspiring
February 9, 2012
Answered

Branching to multiple projects within a SCORM-compatible LMS

  • February 9, 2012
  • 2 replies
  • 2661 views

I'm close here, but I'm not quite getting what I want. Hopefully someone can point to the "easy" way to do this...

I am creating a single course that is composed of multiple Captivate 5 projects. The user is branched to different projects along the way based on the answers to embedded questions (such as passing/failing a pre-test). In the final project I have a post-test. That's the only one that needs to send a score to the LMS.

So let's simplify it for an example:

  • User enters in Module 1 and takes a pre-test.
  • If they pass with a certain score, they go to Module 3. If they fail, they go to Module 2.
  • If they're sent to Module 2, they go to Module 3 after they complete it.
  • In Module 3 they take a post-test and that score gets recorded.

Running this scenario on my desktop is easy. Putting it in a SCORM environment is taxing my brain.

Currently, I'm publishing each Module as its own SCO, keeping the Course ID and Title consistent between them.

I tried using the Multi-SCO Packager, but that results in entries in my LMS for Module 1, 2, and 3 separately. Not what I want.

I have tried moving the folders for Modules 2 and 3 to make them sub-folders of Module 1. That seems to work (I get one course entry point, for Module 1, and I exit with the correct score from Module 3), however in reviewing the LMS reports, this results in an artificially elevated "# of accesses" figure. The reason seems obvious: every time I load Module 1 it's one access, and then when I branch to Module 3, it's another access, because really I'm reloading the page with a new module and SCORM manifest, right? Plus I'm a little worried that this kind of gerry-rigging is going to break something.

I don't really want to use the Aggregator, because I don't want a TOC - they shouldn't have the ability to jump directly to Module 2, for example - but I tried it anyway. And I found that even if I can get it to flow the way I want to, I can't figure out how to package the Aggregated project into a SCORM Manifest.

There's got to be a way to do this. What am I missing? Is there something obvious I'm not considering?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer jeffcaddick10006700

Just to update those interested... I figured it out. As suggested, I had to edit the imsmanifest file using RELOAD. Turns out to be pretty easy, after some annoying trial and error.

I put the details together here, including videos.

2 replies

J
jeffcaddick10006700AuthorCorrect answer
Inspiring
February 17, 2012

Just to update those interested... I figured it out. As suggested, I had to edit the imsmanifest file using RELOAD. Turns out to be pretty easy, after some annoying trial and error.

I put the details together here, including videos.

J
Jim Leichliter
Legend
February 17, 2012

Awesome!  Thanks for making the tutorial.  Mind if I link to your RELOAD tutorial from mine?  Thanks for sharing!

Jim Leichliter

RodWard
Community Expert
RodWardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 10, 2012

You cannot do this with standard Captivate output settings.

You need to learn a bit about how the imsmanifest.xml file is structured and edit the XML code in this file so that your non-assessed modules are seen as resources related to your final assessed module, instead of separate SCORMs.

The Rustici Software SCORM Cloud website has a lot of good information about how SCORM works.

http://scorm.com/scorm-solved/scorm-cloud/

That's a good place to start.

J
jeffcaddick10006700Author
Inspiring
February 10, 2012

Well, that is, to put it simply, disappointing.

Anyone know of a good (free) IMSManifest editor? Something that's a little easier to read than Notepad would be helpful, but something that actually helps make sense of the structure would be awesome. I know Microsoft used to have something... can't remember what it was called...

And to clarify, Rod, you're saying I should be able to output the final module as SCORM (because that's the one with the test), and then edit the XML file to show the other modules as Resources, right?

How does the Manifest tell the LMS which file to launch? Is it just the first one listed in the Resources?

J
jeffcaddick10006700Author
Inspiring
February 10, 2012

The sequencing and navigation capabilities of SCORM 2004 are designed to work between shareable content objects (SCOs). Whether you publish to SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004, Captivate always publishes a course with exactly one SCO, and so doesn't make use of the SCORM sequencing and navigation capabilities. There are ways to implement branching in Captivate, but they're independent of the SCORM capabilities.

You may want to try RELOAD Editor (free) for a mainfest editor:

http://www.reload.ac.uk/editor.html

Here's a tut on how to package multiple SCOs:

http://captivatedev.com/2011/09/30/packaging-adobe-captivate-scos-into-one-course-using-reload-editor/

The tutorial doesn't speak directly to sequensing, but it does describe how to use RELOAD.  Your situation is a bit more complext than just sequential prerequisites.  You need conditional sequencing and that's done by specifying sequencing rules in your manifest:

http://scorm.com/scorm-explained/technical-scorm/sequencing/

Jim Leichliter


Thanks, Jim! RELOAD looks interesting, and as soon as I can get IT to let me view YouTube I'll watch that tutorial.

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