Demonstrable differences between running in Flash and HTML5 ...
May 15, 2017
Hi all,
I’ve identified a demonstrable difference between how a course acts after completing and passing the assessment when running in Flash vs. running in HTML5.
After completing and passing a course with a score of (say) 100% this is what is different:
- In HTML5, any further revisits to any screens prior to exiting the course is not remembered when you relaunch the course – you always come back to the Quiz Results page. [Bad]
- In Flash, any further revisits to any screens prior to exiting the course is remembered when you relaunch the course – you always resume to the screen you exited on. [Good]
- In HTML5, when relaunching and exiting, your previous score percentage is retained (unless you retry the quiz of course). [Good]
- In Flash, when relaunching your previous score percentage is immediately set to 0%, so when exiting again, a score of 0% shows up in SCORM Cloud despite still showing “completed” and “passed”. This can be seen in the SCORM conversation [Bad]
We can demonstrate #1 and #3 in HTML5 mode by repeatedly launching and exiting the course. We can then re-enable Flash and demonstrate #2 and #4 occurring on the next launch.
This has been tested using Google Chrome (with and without Flash enabled) on SCORM 2004 3rd editing. I believe the bug is browser independent and also SCORM 2004 editing independent.
The “not recording any further of progress ” issue in HTML5 happens to stop the issue in #4 above that occurs in Flash but because one bug is stopping anther bug from occurring. I believe the correct process should be to
- continue to maintain and communicate state data back through SCORM after completing the course (unless LMS launches in “review mode” rather than “normal mode”
- do not touch cmi.core.score.raw/min/max unless you complete/retry another assessment.
Personally, I really think Storyline (and Studio) should not even report a new scores until after the user completes all questions of the quiz. This stops you scoring (say) 10% because you happened to retry the quiz and exited after answering just one question. Either the quiz internal state should be discarded upon early exit (saves on additional cmi.suspend_data size), or it’s state is held internally (cmi.suspend_data) until all questions have been answered and the quiz scored at the end. However, this is a separate issue.
As you can understand this is causing real problems with customers who are seeing 0% in their results despite passing the course.
15 Replies
The two SCORM logs below demonstrate one of the problems that we are having with SL360 published to SCORM 2004 (2nd edition in this particular case):
First Launch: (completed the course and passed the quiz with 90%
https://cloud.scorm.com/sc/guest/ViewDebugLog?logId=184ebfb2-c9d6-4062-9b24-b6e3066d22c4&courseTitle=Fraud+Awareness+for+Employees+SL360+R003+%28SCORM+2004%29
SCORM Status (on exit): complete / passed / 90%
Second Launch: (revisited some pages in chapter 1 but went nowhere near the quiz then exited)
https://cloud.scorm.com/sc/guest/ViewDebugLog?logId=9d8530c2-731d-48e8-a9fd-e04b33b99e72&courseTitle=Fraud+Awareness+for+Employees+SL360+R003+%28SCORM+2004%29
SCORM Status (on exit): complete / passed / 0%
During the second launch, the LMS restates the following data to the course:
· cmi.completion_status = completed
· cmi.success_status = passed
· cmi.exit = suspend
· cmi.mode = normal (we are intentionally allowing the user to revisit the course rather than browse only. This is allowed under scorm and will allow the user to improve on their pass mark if they wish to)
After a request for cmi.suspend_data and a couple more requests for completion and success status, the course starts to set cmi.score.raw/min/max to 0 / 0 / 100. (10 times over in fact)
This happens in Flash mode only, not HTML5, but HTML5 also doesn't continue to record other details such as what page you exited the course on which it should,
This should not be happening.
Ah, thanks! I have experienced some odd things with HTML5 output, but I never was anywhere as close to figuring out why. This is valuable. I will attempt to reproduce and see if the issues I faced are the same.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for such a detailed report here. I'm going to start a support case for you so that you can share the courses with our team as well (that'll help connect to the logs you shared here). So keep an eye out for an email from Support@articulate.com.
Soren,
Happy to help you do the same - or feel free to reach out to the team if you're able to reproduce it.
I have received an email from Articulate Support and uploaded our STORY file. Thanks.
Thanks Chris - and I'll follow along in your case too!
Update.
WB at articulate support has now been able to replicate the issue where HTML5 output does not bookmark the last slide you visited after finishing the quiz (#1 in opening post).
It appears the issue under point #4 doesn't occur if you create a fresh SL360 project but is occurring because we've upgraded a SL2 project to SL360. (We have a lot of courses that we constantly evolve and the naturally need upgrading to the latest Storyline product.) Thanks.
Thanks Chris - I saw that update from Wilbert too, and that you sent him some additional information today. I'll touch base with Wilbert!
Hi Chris,
Just checking in on your case and I see that Wilbert reported the issue to our team as a possible software but. I'm really sorry that it's causing you such problems, and we'll keep you posted here and as a part of your case on any updates or developments.
Thank you for reporting it and your patience while we investigate!
Thanks for keeping on the case.
No problem Chris. 🙂
Is there any progress with this demonstrable problem? Its causing a ton of support issues begin raised with our clients which we then have to manually patch. I've not heard back from Wilbert since he fed back that he had seen the problem first hand. Thanks.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for checking in.
I don't have any updates on this bug yet, but some bugs can be fixed quickly, while others take longer to fix. Here's a bit more on how we identify and tackle bugs.
Wilbert or I will let you know as soon as we have an update on this issue, and I'm really sorry it's causing so much extra work and frustration.
Hi there
Wonder if there is anything new here? One year after?
Kind regards - Lars
Hi there, Lars. Thanks for checking in. We identified 2 issues in this discussion as buggy, and we're still investigating:
Can you let me know what your publishing format is, Lars? Does this behavior match what you're seeing on your end? Thanks!
Hi everyone,
Good news! We fixed the issue you reported where:
Resume always comes back to the Quiz results page and not the last slide visited when viewing the HTML5 output.
Install the latest Storyline 360 update to take advantage of all the recent features and fixes. Here's how.
If the problem happens again, please record a Peek 360 screencast for me, and I'll be happy to help!
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