Articulate Storyline and Tin Can - Basic questions

Hi Dave, 

I'm not a Tin Can expert, but luckily we have a number of articles that will help answer your questions, such as this primer on why and when you'd want to use the publish to Tin Can option. 

If your LMS doesn't support Tin Can, you could still access your course on the iPad through mobile safari, but likely not through the Articulate Mobile player.  If your LMS doesn’t require a login, your learners might be able to use the Articulate Mobile Player. If your LMS requires a login, learners might not be able to use the Articulate Mobile Player, because browsers cannot pass security credentials to iPad apps unless the LMS supports Tin Can API. You'll need to test your published output in your particular LMS environment if you plan to allow viewing in Articulate Mobile Player.

Thanks Ashley.  I appreciate the info.  From reading the article, we have this scenario:  We have an LMS that does not have Tin Can, so we will publish as HTML5 so that the course can be taken in Safari.  It has quiz questions, but the tracking/results will still come back to the LMS as long as the user is on WIFI with their iPad.  I hope that my understanding there is correct.

So, if we can use HTML5 and it will bring quiz results back to the LMS, then what is the benefit of Tin Can?  That's where I am confused.

Thanks again for any further info!  It is a big help for me.

Hi Dave, 

Yes to your first question. 

As for your second, Tin Can is normally used for content hosted on external LMS hosts. If you had the ability to use Tin Can, then you'd also be able to pass information from the mobile player back to your LMS.  Additionally, if you're launched your course by opening the link from your LMS and then are viewing it in the mobile player, you should be able to visit the mobile player again to access the course, and as long as you're connected to the internet and have published for the Tin Can API the information will be tracked and returned to your LMS

There is a lot more technical information on Tin Can API here. 

Dave,

A client of ours also uses the GreenLight LMS. They mentioned that the LMS does not support Tin Can (I asked hoping they would so we could avoid the HTML5 limitations we found in Storyline on the iPad/Safari browser). So we published a Storyline course with SCORM 1.2 and HTML5 and they uploaded it in the LMS. We are testing the course now using the iPad and the Safari browser. We have found the following and were wondering if you had similar results.

• When the course opens, GreenLight adds a sort of LMS menu above the course and pushes the course down so the bottom 1/8 or so of the Storyline course is cut off. The custom navigation buttons at bottom right and bottom of the menu are partially obscured.
• We use a lot of interactive features so there is a lot of tapping on the iPad to open layers. We noticed that when you single-tap on a hotspot it opens the layer. But Storyline HTML5 output is sometimes slow on the iPad, so when you tap, nothing happens. Then you tap again and if you double-tap, the screen zooms in (not the intended affect as we want the hotspot trigger to open a layer). We were looking for a way to turn the double-tap/zoom feature off for the LMS as this does not happen on other LMSs.

Just wondering if you had the same experience and could shed any light on any possible solutions.

Thanks.

Patrick:

We encountered the same thing that you described in your second bullet.  With content (HTML5 in safari) that contains interactions and lots of slides, it is just becomes too burdensome for the users when they tap the screen and things don't respond, and before you know it, they have zoomed in/out and sometimes the browser just closes.  We've also seen the problems with the navigation buttons that you describe in your first bullet point.  At this point, we have abandoned the use of iPads for courses unless the course is a few slides with basically no interactions (and definitely no quiz questions).

Our LMS, SilkRoad GreenLight, does not have Tin Can API.  For over a year, they have said they are "monitoring the market conditions for Tin Can", which makes me think it may not be working that well.  I am going to start another thread to get input from people that have an LMS with Tin Can to see how well it is working.

I've been confused about using the Articulate Mobile Player.  Is this a true statement?:   If your LMS does not have Tin Can, then the Articulate Mobile Player is NOT able to send back a status to the LMS as to whether the user completed the course.

Hi Dave,

Yes, that is true statement. If you don't need to support tracking, and your LMS doesn't require a log in, your learners might be able to use the Articulate Mobile Player. If your LMS requires a login, learners might not be able to use the Articulate Mobile Player, because browsers cannot pass security credentials to iPad apps unless the LMS supports Tin Can API. You'll need to test your published output in your particular LMS environment if you plan to allow viewing in Articulate Mobile Player.

You may also want to review our Tin Can documentation here, and there is a white paper linked within it that may help in convincing your LMS to support Tin Can. 

Dave,

Thanks for your response and for confirming our experience on SilkRoad GreenLight. Hope you find a solution so you can use interactive Storyline courses on your LMS (if you ever do, let me know).

I will also search out your Tin Can/Experience API post as well. I found that you have to evangelize (plead) to LMS contacts on the behalf of Tin Can/Experience API. And if our clients are looking for an LMS, I suggest getting one with Tin Can/Experience API. I see mixed reviews on Tin Can/Experience API adoption. Most of our clients have enterprise level LMSs such as Sum Total. Our clients say it is like pulling teeth get these larger LMSs to adopt anything new, much less a new standard such as Tin Can/Experience API. When I see these larger LMSs adopting Tin Can/Experience API, then I know there is movement. From what I can tell, it is mostly smaller, newer, more nimble LMSs (some mid-sized) that have moved forward with Tin Can/Experience API. List of adopters is here. Tin Can has huge potential for tracking more than SCORM. But all we need for is a more stable environment for tracking our Storyline courses on an iPad because the Storyline/HTML5/iPad combination has lots of performance issues. 

If anyone else knows how to turn off the Zoom in feature on SilkRoad GreenLight so we can tap on hotspots in a Storyline course on the iPad/Safari browser, please let me know. I will share Dave's comments and any solutions for this issue with our SilkRoad GreenLight LMS managers.