Gathering Quiz Results outside of a LMS - Solution Request

Dec 21, 2012

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I really enjoy working in Articulate Storyline – the functionality is great.  However, one aspect that has been haunting me for the last 1-2 years is the inability to gather assessment data outside of our LMS. I’ve been playing around with this issue off and on for while now, but I’ve reached a roadblock and I HAVE to figure this out.

 

Here’s some background –

 

I currently work on a project called Sci-Mind, which in a nutshell, is an online learning community that targets practicing scientists in the arena of – Separation Science, Toxicology, and Polymer chemistry.

 

Currently, after a user signs up for the community, we send them a link to a pre-test, which we call “The Analyst” which basically gauges their skill level and interests.  Currently the Analyst is created in Google Documents and I’m tasked to make improvements to the overall look and feel.

 

This will very easy for me to do using Storyline, however there is one roadblock that I have to get around in order for this to work.  How can I gather the results of the quiz without using a LMS, Articulate Online, a custom built database, or HTML 5?

 

Here’s why I can’t go with the items listed above…

·         LMS – The Analyst needs to be accessed without my team having to create a username/login in the LMS because of the large amount of individuals that will be taking the quiz.

 

·         Articulate Online – I don’t have the budget for Articulate online, nor do I want to use the 30 day trial. 

 

·         Custom Built Database – Timeline.  I don’t have the time or resources to build a custom database for this.  I need to figure this one out in less than 1 week.  However, if anyone has any code out there - it will be much appreciated.

 

·         HTML 5- I’ve researched the threads and am aware that you can email quiz results using a javascript trigger and HTML 5.  However, I don’t want to have to require our potential customers to download Safari OR Google Chrome.  The majority of our target audience accesses Sci-Mind at work – therefore I need to be able to pull this off using earlier version of IE and Storyline flash output.

 

This has been quite the challenge for me and I’m determined to figure this one out by 2013.

 

Here is my list of potential solutions…

 

1. Embed Google Docs using the embedded web object feature.

This would work out ok – but it would limit what I can do in terms of Storyline functionality.  Additionally, the overall look and feel would suffer.

 

 

2. Prompt students to email results using their own email.

I could have the results output to a .pdf file (so I can make the report look excellent) and then prompt the user to email the results to our Sci-Mind email address. However, I would rather this be automated.

 

Ideal Solution:

Ideally, I would like the results to be emailed to us automatically when the user selects a “Send Results” button.  However, this road is problematic in the Storyline flash output and become of security contents on the browser side (correct me if I’m wrong).

 

One solution I was considering was having the variables from storyline pass to a .html webpage.  However, I'm not sure how I could do that.  I know it would require a javascript trigger on the storyline side - but I'm not sure how to pull it off on the webpage side.

 

 

Does anyone have any ideas on how to resolve this issue? 

6 Replies
Phil Mayor

The major issue I see here is that people use email clients less and less and more people use web based email.

Even if you could force them to send an email, its not possible to do this if they do not have a client installed.  

It would be easier (in my mind) to install an open source LMS such as moodle on my server and get users to access it through there, but you have reasons for not doing this

You could do a javascript, PHP, MySQL solution but this takes me well outside my comfort zone.

RC -

Hi Phil -

Thanks for the response.   Considering my timeline, I'm going to have to take the embedded web object route with either google forms OR surveymonkey.  Eventually when I have some more time, I'll probably revisit this and try to pull of something fancy with javascript/PHP/MySQL - but that probably won't happen for awhile. 

Thanks,

Ryan

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