Moodle is not logging completions at least half of the time

Aug 08, 2012

My client chose to use a vendor who has never hosted an LMS before to be the LMS provider for our courses and this vendor decided to use Moodle. The project manager for this program has never been involved in any sort of training or LMS program in her career, so this adds to the problem. I feel that this back-story is important to show the big picture.

I advised against this, simply because I know that learning management systems can be fussy and if you do't have a lot of experience with one, you're just asking for trouble. My client was OK with this because this vendor offered the LMS at a good price with the understanding that my client would be purchasing their courses. 

The problem is that this vendor is also hosting eight of my Articulate courses on the Moodle LMS and at least half of the time the courses aren't showing as compete once the user finishes.  

I've 10 companies using my courses on various learning management systems and have never seen anything like this. Every once in a while, one user might not show as complete, but that's less than 1% and my clients know that it's just the LMS being fussy. 

The vendor is blaming the issue on my courses, even though their courses are also not logging as complete all the time (I saw the report- they didn't know that). There is a lot of finger-pointing going on, which is not how I like to roll. I feel at a disadvantage because I'm unable to prove that it's not my course. How do you prove a negative? 

My question (finally!) is:

If the courses tested out properly initially AND; at least half of the time the courses show as complete in the system and; the courses which aren't showing as complete are varied (i.e. there is not one course that is ALWAYS the problem- whether it's their course or mine), is it safe to say that it's the LMS and not my courses? 

Is there something in my course that would cause some users to complete and others not to complete? That doesn't make sense to me, but I don't want to be close-minded. 

How would I prove this? I'm spending a lot of time jumping through hoops (repackaging, etc.) and it's frustrating, especially when the project manager is telling me to "just do it" so the vendor will back down. 

My client is a large international company, so there are many users having issues. I don't like the idea that the learners are getting frustrated with their scores not showing up in the system and sometimes they take the course 2-3 times before they finally email us that they can't get a 'complete'.

Help? 

11 Replies
Dan Marsden

Hi Lori,

There isn't really enough information there for us to be able to give specific help, but your question is quite similar to many other questions I see in the forums. Instead of responding here I've just written a blog post which may help you and your client to diagnose the issue:

http://danmarsden.com/blog/2012/08/08/scorm-doesnt-work-in-moodle/

hopefully that will be useful.

Joe Deegan

Dan pointed out some good issues that commonly come up with Moodle in his blog post.  Something that seems to trip a lot of people is tracking slide views versus quiz results. Do you know if you are using "slide views" or "quiz results" to track completion in Storyline? Another thing to check is what the "Grading Method" is set to in Moodle for each SCORM object.  If you are using "Slide Views" then you'll want the grading method set to "Learning Objects."  And as Dan pointed out in his post a major question is what version of Moodle are you using?

Are there are any common circumstances for the people having issues?  I've run into issues like this based on how users were exiting the tutorial so that's something to ask.  Hopefully we can help you out with the answers to some of these questions.

Lori Rosenberg

Thanks to both of you! I know I don't have a lot of information, and that's because the moodle vendor won't give it to me. I'm not allowed in their system *yet*, so I don't even know what version they are using. 

Crazy! 

I'm using Articulate 09 (but have just purchased Storyline and am anxious to start using it!) and am tracking via quiz results. It's a quiz at the end of each course. I've made the vendor aware that this is what the tracking is based on.

There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to why some courses complete and some don't. I get the email from the users and there doesn't seem to be a consistent theme. Sometimes they complete 6 of the 8 courses, and some folks can't complete any of the courses so I can only assume that it's something with Moodle.  

Dan, I'll check out your blog post and forward it on to the vendor. Hopefully it will help. 

Thanks again!

Susan Menzies

I have had this (technical) problem and it turned out to do with browser compatibility - that it works in IE 8 but not IE 9 - your provider should be able to do a fix on this. (should be in the contract that the Moodle will be compatible with IE 9). Apparently this is to do with the way that IE9 is currently working (or not working) with JavaScript and Flash, and Microsoft have to do product updates for this to work, but so far no luck.

Another issue is that sometimes (DURRGH!) one (not saying who!) forgets to "enrol" the user in the course after the user has been registered into the system.

Lori Rosenberg

This is all great stuff, thanks so much to everyone who has responded. 

Dan, I read your post and it was enlightening! Thank you!

I'm passing on all of this information to the vendor to let them sort it out. 

Thanks again so much for taking the time to respond to me. I really try to give my client the best customer service possible and this has been frustrating for me because the Moodle vendor keeps pointing their fingers at me. 

Thankfully, I do many things for this client in addition to creating eLearning modules and they know that I bend over backward for them.

It's nice that, thanks to you all, I can provide them with documentation from the experts that this really might be a Moodle problem and not an issue with my courses. 

Joe Deegan

Good point on the IE 9 problem.  I had to add add the below code to the head of your theme to fix that problem.  The code causes it to run in IE 8 compatibility mode.  Think I actually got this from Dan.

"<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=8″ />"

I have a screenr covering the process of setting up an Articulate scorm module on Moodle that your vendor may find useful.

Good luck! Let us know if you end up finding the solution. There definitely should be one.  I use Moodle a lot and don't have many problems with scores reporting and when there are it's usually user error.

Lori Rosenberg

Joe Deegan said:

Good point on the IE 9 problem.  I had to add add the below code to the head of your theme to fix that problem.  The code causes it to run in IE 8 compatibility mode.  Think I actually got this from Dan.

""

I have a screenr covering the process of setting up an Articulate scorm module on Moodle that your vendor may find useful.

Good luck! Let us know if you end up finding the solution. There definitely should be one.  I use Moodle a lot and don't have many problems with scores reporting and when there are it's usually user error.


OH, the PEBCAC issue! (Problem Lies Between Chair And Computer). 

Thanks for the additional info!

Todd Thornton

Phil Mayor said:

  I use Moodle a lot and don't have many problems with scores reporting and when there are it's usually user error.


My favourite quote of the day


I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about the quote concerning Moodle and Scorm.  

When I get tech support calls from my mother and I jokingly tell her it's probably user error, she tells me a "user error" is just a design/program flaw that wasn't fixed or updated. She has a point!

Todd

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