What Next?
Mar 27, 2013
I begin by reminding you I am a teacher and not a technologist. Bear with my occasional mistakes in terminology!
I will try to make this "abridged". I spent a year on sabbatical learning every thing I could about how to design my own instructional materials for LMS delivery. At that time, our LMS was WebCT. I researched my software options extensively and decided on Articulate. Because of budget cuts, I had to purchase the suite myself. One of my subject areas is American Sign Language which necessitates the use of much video. While I developed most of my work in "Quizmaker" the most used activity (a vocabulary play list) is developed using Engage.
I returned to school with materials I knew would be of great benefit to my students and was proud of the final product. I loved using Articulate and was happy with my decision. When I returned from sabbatical in the fall, our LMS was being migrated from WebCT to Canvas. ARRGGHHH! SO- now, while my students could "benefit" I could no longer "track" their progress and data was lost since Canvas does not "support" SCORM. I'm still trying to get over that one!
In my first semester using the materials (last Fall) I also learned:
- Engage materials will not work for ANY of my students who are Mac based
- The integrity of functionality of any of my materials is subject to the browser my students open it in. Last semester, only Google would work. Two weeks ago, the Chrome update rendered ALL my activities impotent. They wouldn't even play. My team of technology experts worked on it for 24 hours and this is the ultimate answer they came up with:
"Your Articulate software is generating Flash content that’s compatible with earlier versions of Flash, so it’s trying to be as compatible with older technology as possible. The problem is that the latest version of Flash in Chrome seems to be having a hard time dealing with the fact that’s older technology for some reason."
The end result has been my students having to switch between browsers again and again and again trying to get one activity or the other to work. They also know I can't track any of their actual progress or work, so ultimately most of them just don't do it. Additionally, some activities just won't work at all (they did last semester) but only sometimes and no one can answer that one.
I can't salvage this semester, but need to weigh out my options for semesters ahead. I would welcome suggestions for best alternate delivery method. I considered hosting with articulate but it would cost me far too much money. I would love my materials to be housed in a place where students can easily get to them, benefit from the interactivity and have a 95% chance that things will work efficiently and accurately. It was suggested I make a CD copy as "back-up" for all of my students. I'm not crazy about how fragile DVD/CDs are. Students break them, they get damaged n sun and scratched in book bags.
I am looking for input and suggestions. There are probably many things out there I simply haven't thought of.
Thanks!
7 Replies
Hi Allie,
Well, that certainly sounds like a long road to travel. I'm sorry to hear about all the trouble you've had with your courses.
One thing to keep in mind, though is that there's absolutely no way to guarantee that the material will always be 100% operational on every system that views it. This is because you cannot control the system setup for each user that views that content. Systems and setups will always vary. Some users prefer Internet Explorer, while others may personally prefer Firefox or Google Chrome. Some users may be really dedicated to keeping their version of Flash updated, while others may not even consider updating it - or may not even be aware that they can update it.
I'm not saying that the problems you experienced should be happening, only that issues may arise in some environments. The only thing you can try to do to keep these problems from happening is to try to ensure your learners are using at least the minimum requirements to view the courses.
The requirements for viewing the content are as follows:
Flash Player 6.0.79 or later (http://www.adobe.com/go/getflash) (Flash Player 7 or later recommended), and one of the following browsers:
Having said all that, if you run into any of these issues again, please let us know! We are more than happy to work with you to make sure you and your users experience the best results with your courses.
After the last few weeks, I am finally at the point of deciding how to alternately host my materials. My Articulate projects are only intermittently working in Canvas and the amount of extra work it has created on the "putting out fires" front is simply no longer justifiable. Even with my students having all the "requirements" as listed above, with Canvas as "host" the obstacles no longer seem surmountable. Keep in mind, I have been forced to give up the ability to even track my student's work and/or progress since they do not fully "support" SCORMed materials.
I have even consulted with application designers to check the cost of getting materials to my students in a completely different platform, but doing so would mean I burnt up an entire year developing slick interactive multimedia materials for nothing.
At this point, I would love to find some other way to deliver the materials, but don't even know what my options are. I do know this, my school will not financially help me support any option outside of Canvas, so I need to keep it priced so I can pay for it myself. Should I publish to CD? Is there a way to publish to some other space that will free up the limitations imposed by Canvas? Can I publish to my own personal web space? Is there a publishing option that will allow me to capture student score reports? We have an entire Language Lab with 50 computer stations. Can I somehow deliver the content that way? I am really seeking solutions at this point that will allow me to work outside of Canvas. I have been a very good sport trying to get my e-learning vision to work in the LMS my entire district has committed to, but I think I am done.
I know that a newer version of my Articulate software is due out this year. Since it publishes to HTML5, I anticipate there will be a smoother flow, but I am also assuming it will not rectify my inability to "track" my students in Canvas.
I just need ideas for HOW to allow my materials to breath and do the work they were designed to do.
Thanks!
Good morning Allie. I hope you had a great weekend!
I totally understand the financial situation. Hopefully we'll be able to find an option that will work for you and your wallet.
Have you checked out Articulate Online? It's our hosted service which allows you to upload any Articulate-published content, and then track and report on your learners' progress and results. If you do all of your authoring with Articulate products, Articulate Online is a great choice because it's super easy to use and includes a lot of intuitive reports, plus the option to create custom reports. It could handle your current set up without a problem. You're welcome to download the free trial and give it a test run!
Publishing to CD would work, but there may be limitations for tracking that content.
There's also quite a few free LMS services out there, or services that may be less expensive and more reliable than your current provider. Take a look around on the forums, there have been many discussions on this topic. Maybe one of those will work for you.
If you have the option to create your own web server, this could definitely be an option for you.
You may also want to consider posting in the Building Better Courses section of the forums. You'd get more exposure to your questions there for LMS or web server options and I'm sure our awesome community would provide some helpful feedback for you.
This was the wrong place to post. Are these posts directly to Articulate support? Then I accidentally did it again tonight. I think I finally got the post in the right place, but can't figure out how to delete the accidental post . Thanks so much for your input. I'm certain that the community will have valuable feedback.
No, the posts are not directly to support, but we monitor these sections as they're primarily for support issues. The General Discussion sections of the forums probably get more exposure to community members, though, so you may have more luck receiving feedback in the other section you posted to.
I think I just spotted and responded to that other post you mentioned, here in the support section.
I can remove that for you
Allie,
Hope it's okay to jump on the back of this complicated issue but as a quick-fix solution have you tried SCORM cloud?
I use it for piloting content and have had 0 issues in a bunch of different browsers.
Just upload your SCORM content, share a link, or email invites to your students and you can track from it's dashboard.
Theres a free trial for up to 10 users, and the paid for plans are pretty affordable:
http://www.scormcloud.com
Another alternative is to use something called XAMMP. This is free but a little more complicated. You, or your IT dept. can set this up locally and install another free LMS such as Moodle for example. As mentioned, it's a little more complicated and time consuming to set up, but something I've used in the past for testing SCORM and it's worked a treat across all platforms.
A bit more info can be found below:
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
Hope this helps.
Alexei.
Hi Alexehi,
Thanks so much for your reply. I have 50 users and to proved them the content it would be expensive for me. There is also an issue of muli SCO-packaging. I have started to pilot their options, and have spoken to them a few times, but honestly the interface is a little complex for a non coder like me. I would need to hire a person who could provide the code work for a multi-SCO Package. Right now, each of my SCORM content packages is treated as a "class" . If I can't bundle them, I can't afford it.
thanks again!
Allie
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