Progress will not save after a certain number of quizzes

Dec 12, 2011

I have a 192 slide presentation which includes 10 quizzes.

I have uploaded the course to an LMS and 99.9% of everything works fine.  

The issue is with recording the progress of the course.

For the first 100 slides, the progress is saved fine.  I have logged in and out randomly up until that point and I always am returned to the proper spot.  However any slides after 101, if viewed and then logged out, will not be saved in the progress and it will return the user to slide 101 which is a quiz.  Even weirder slide 101 is a multi-question quiz (4 questions randomly selected from a bank) and it will always start you off on question number 3 of 4.  

I have tried updating this quiz and no luck.  I have also re positioned this quiz (which is typically fourth in sequence of quizzes) so that it is the 2nd quiz.  In this case it worked fine, but the new 4th quiz in sequence had this issue (not saving progress beyond it and always forcing a user back to the quiz upon returning).

I am totally baffled and frustrated.  I just bought Articulate less than a week ago and really need this to work.  

The LMS people are saying there are no LMS settings that would affect this as they only "do what the SCORM object tells them to"

Please help ASAP - I have a 5000 piece direct mail going out soon trying to get people to take this course and it would be detrimental if the progress can't be saved after the 4th quiz.

Info regarding the settings:

The course quizzes all allow slides to be at any time, but the presentation has restricted navigation where you must see each slide successively and cannot seek within the seekbar.

14 Replies
Peter Anderson

Hello Sarnen,

Please create an Articulate Presenter package, then upload the zip file to our server. You can review how to do this here: 

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/?p=457

Upload the resulting zip file from your computer to our server using this upload form: 

http://upload.articulate.com

***Please include the full subject line from this email where specified on the form.***

In the description please include the number(s) of the slides that contain your particular issue(s). Please be as detailed as possible with your description. 

We will attempt to diagnose what's happening when we receive your upload.
Sarnen Steinbarth

Phil Mayor said:

You may be hitting the limit for scorm data for your lms, does the file play correctly offline?

You should be able to get your lms guys to increase the scorm data threshold, are you publishing to scorm 2004?

Scorm 1.2

You can still view the slides after this quiz, in fact you can still complete the course.  But if you log out and then back in you get put back in the middle of this quiz, without any forward progress saved (even after completing the quiz the 2nd and subsequent times).

Would this problem be related to data thresholds since you can still go past it (without logging out)?

Sarnen Steinbarth

OK I just uploaded the presenter package upload as requested.  Interestingly ths posed another issue.  The package contained all the quizzes but only 1 of 2 engage interactions.  Not sure why that is, but it is secondary to fixing this issue regarding saving progress.

FYI - I could not replicate the progress saving issue on the trial account of articulate online that I have.  I figured it must be an issue with the LMS - but the LMS tech support said no that the LMS just does whatever the SCORM package says. . . and that it is an issue with Articulate.

Peter Anderson

Hi Sarnen,

If you'd like, you can have a look at this helpful article on troubleshooting Articulate/LMS issues and run the SCORM Cloud to test whether your content is functioning properly (found under #3 in the article). If it checks out OK, it is most likely an issue with the LMS.

http://www.articulate.com/blog/9-ways-to-troubleshoot-articulate-lms-issues/

Sarnen Steinbarth

Here is what the LMS providors are saying regarding the character limit:

"Here is the bottom line, we tested out your SCORM file without the SCORM 1.2 standards limit of 4096 characters and it worked fine.  Unfortunately we did a bit further research and found that the SCORM 1.2 standard specifically tests for this max number of characters and fails the LMS on the certification test if we don't limit it.  Here is the script code they require us to pass:

   ERROR: LMSSetValue(cmi.suspend_data) failed. Condition Tested: Invalid CMIString4096: 4097 Characters. Expected error code: 405 Current error code: "0"
    ERROR: LMSSetValue(cmi.suspend_data) failed. Condition Tested: Invalid CMIString4096: 5000 Characters. Expected error code: 405 Current error code: "0"
As you can see, we would no longer be SCORM compliant if we make this change.  This is a standard that we are checked on regularly and we can't drop out of compliance. "
So essentially they are saying that Articulate is not in compliance with SCORM 1.2 by having more than the max characters.
I really don't know what all this means aside from my course progress won't get saved. 
How do I know how many characters a course has?   Why does saving a certain slide, for example slide 101, take more characters than saving a different slide, for example slide 20?
Bottom line . . .how do I fix this?
P.S. - I can't take quiz questions out - as it is most quizzes only have around 5 questions in them (out of approx. 15 question bank)
Phil Mayor

AP sends all of the resume information to the LMS the issue here is your LMS cannot handle that information.

The more slides you have the more resume data that is sent, this increases as you add quizes and interactions, you can reduce the information by not setting your quiz's and interactions to resume, the issue isnt slide 101 but the cumulative affect and I would expect by the time you reach slide 101 you have hit 4096 characters

You coul also reduce the size of your course and perhaps split it into smaller segments

The simplest solution is for your lms to accept more data, most lms's increase the amount of scorm data they accept, because the limit of 1.2 is low

Sarnen Steinbarth

Phil Mayor said:

AP sends all of the resume information to the LMS the issue here is your LMS cannot handle that information.

The more slides you have the more resume data that is sent, this increases as you add quizes and interactions, you can reduce the information by not setting your quiz's and interactions to resume, the issue isnt slide 101 but the cumulative affect and I would expect by the time you reach slide 101 you have hit 4096 characters

You coul also reduce the size of your course and perhaps split it into smaller segments

The simplest solution is for your lms to accept more data, most lms's increase the amount of scorm data they accept, because the limit of 1.2 is low


Phil,  Thanks for the information.  Keep it coming . . . 

You mentioned "Not setting the quizzes and interactions to resume"  

a.  How do I do this?

b.  If I do do this will the resume work on the rest of the slides?  What is the practical difference by changing this setting?

The goal here is that I don't won't some poor guy to be at 3:45 min into a 4 hour course.  Save it to go eat dinner, return and realize he has lost an hour 45 minutes of progress and is back to the 2 hour mark.  (And no I can't allow free navigation -  I must have restricted navigation to get course approval).

I would prefer not to split it up - but I will if I have  to.  If I do:

a. What is the best way to retain the audio files for each slide.  Can I just copy the entire presentation to a new PPT and delete half from each PPT?

b. How will I know how small to make each part so I don't hit 4096 characters?

The LMS initially had no issue raising the character limits.  And it worked fine when they did.  ( So we know now this is definitely the issue)  However they said they could not keep it with the higher limits because they are SCORM 1.2 certified and if they don't follow the SCORM 1.2 specs they could lose their certification.  They said keeping it at 4096 is a requirement for compliance with SCORM 1.2 and were surprised that Articulate would publish a SCORM 1.2 object that did not meet SCORM 1.2 specs (having more than the allowable characters).

Thanks for the info.

Phil Mayor

In the interaction properties and quiz properties you can choose not to resume, this will reduce the data sent to the lms

The difference will be if they leave a quiz they will need to restart it the same with the engage interactions. 

It may be better to split the course, this will have some benefits, publish times will shorten, a bonus when you find someting wrong,also the course becomes more palatable for users, 4 hours of elearning is obscene

I think your lms provider is spinning you a story though, this should have no effect on their scorm compliance

If your lms is scorm 2004 compliant then using this (3rd edition) will allow more data to be stored

Justin Wilcox

Hi Sarnen. SCORM 1.2 is a very old spec. The reason that there is a character limit for that specific section has to do with the technology back in the day the spec was created. The limitation that is imposed is kind of irrelevant now and increasing that character limit shouldn't cause any issues with how SCORM 1.2 handles the data from what I understand. That is why SCORM 2004 allows a much higher limit.

If you want your studio content to resume everything, you would likely need to break up the course into smaller courses if you can't change that character limit in the LMS.

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