Submit Answer Behaviour and SCORM
Jun 28, 2012
By
John Curran
We are currently building a new LMS product and are investigating the data communication between a standalone quiz and the SCORM API.
When you publish a quiz to SCORM you get the option to record either:
Passed Incomplete
Passed Failed
Completed Incomplete
Completed Failed
What is the significance of these different 'status' pairs?
What I also need to know is how SCORM handles the different 'Submit Answer' schemes (if it does). When you exit a quiz before completing it the answers are saved but is this managed by the LMS or by a cookie? My guess is that it's a cookie.
One final question on this topic. Is it possible to record which answers were selected for each question using SCORM?
Hope this isn't too technical for this forum!
6 Replies
Can any of the Articulate Staff help here please?
Hi John,
Sorry for the delay in replying.
>What is the significance of these different 'status' pairs?
In the SCORM 1.2 world the spec allows us to set any of those options for lesson_status when reporting to an LMS, but several LMS vendors out there that only accept one or the other (i.e. will only accept passed/failed, or complete/incomplete), so we give you the option to specify how we report status in the event that your LMS provider is picky about which one we use. The SCORM standard allows for you to use either passed/failed or complete/incomplete, or a combination of the two.
>What I also need to know is how SCORM handles the different 'Submit Answer' schemes (if it does). When you exit a quiz before completing it the answers are saved but is this managed by the LMS or by a cookie? My guess is that it's a cookie.
That data is actually stored/managed by the lms in the cmi.core.suspend_data string that we pass to the LMS. It is a compressed data string that tells the course (when it is relaunched on subsequent relaunches) where they left off.
>One final question on this topic. Is it possible to record which answers were selected for each question using SCORM?
We send that data to the LMS, but it is up to the LMS to report on it. So if you don't see if in your LMS, then in all likelihood your LMS has chosen not to report it back. If you want to check out a sample SCORM 1.2 log from our content that shows everything that we report to the LMS you can check it out here:
http://www.articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=qm9&id=vza8fs22aop0
You will notice that we send the student response, and correct response for every questionID. Also as a note, if you are wondering why we don't report on the question text (i.e. what the question was) the SCORM 1.2 spec didn't allow for communicating question description.
-Dave
Dave,
The delay was more than offset by the completeness of your response! Thanks for a very comprehensive answer.
John
Dave,
One additional question then - If we publish a quiz to 'Web' (i.e. not LMS) then does Quizmaker invoke a cookie to store answers in case of a resume? I'm assuming that the 'When running in LMS ignore Flash cookie' option in Player > Navigation hints at this functionality?
John
Hi John,
The short answer is no, and maybe Dave can jump in with more detailed info if necessary, but the Quizmaker answers do not get stored. The "ignore cookie in LMS" function basically just means the quiz will only look to the LMS for resume data, not Flash cookie.
Yeah, well, let me explain a bit more.
The answer is yes and no
We store resume data in a "flash cookie" (technically called Flash local storage I believe) which is compressed data that tells the player how to resume your course. But there is no way of taking that local storage object and deciphering it to see how someone answered each question.
-Dave
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