Data between elearning within a course

Apr 10, 2019

I have a number of elearnings within a given course and would like to use information gathered in one elearning (e.g. a user's name) and use it in a later elearning within the same course. I have seen old discussions somewhat related to this problem. Is there a more recent solution or workaround?

Thank you for the help!

8 Replies
Thomas Crockett

Adding to Brian's question, if the courses are on an LMS you can pull some data directly from there into your courses if needed.

For example, I have a short bit of JS (below) for pulling a learner's name and assigning it to a variable. This was done in Captivate for a Totara LMS, but I'm sure with a little alteration, it could be applied to your requirements;

var learnerName = get('cmi.core.student_name');
var firstName = learnerName.split(', ')[0];
var lastName = learnerName.split(', ')[1];

Essentially any user data that is held on the LMS can be accessed in-course in a similar way, names, locations, roles, course completion stats etc.

Brian Allen

I think it would be good to clarify exactly what a "course" is in your context.

Is it one "course" in your LMS, made up of multiple Storyline activities, built and published from multiple Storyline authoring files?

If so, what kind(s) of info would you be sharing from one storyline activity to another besides name?

Chris Drew

Yes, one course (as I'm defining it) is comprised of multiple, stand-alone elearnings interspersed with written assignments. Each of these needs to be opened separately from the course "container" that keeps them organized.

Ideally, I would like to share any written response, test input (not just score), or number generated by a user. So...if the information is gathered in one elearning, that elearning is complete and closed, The user would be able to open the next elearning and have their name appear without having to reenter it, for example. Or, a user would be reminded of their text response in subsequent elearnings, so they can reflect on their response.

Brian Allen

Cool, that's pretty much what I'd gathered.

Because it's actually multiple Storyline objects it becomes challenging to pass variable data from one learning object to another.

As Thomas pointed out above, there are some items exposed by most LMS's APIs that you can tap into via JS snippets, such as snagging the user name and automatically populating that into a course.

I do know that it will not be possible to get to data stored in your LMS from other learning objects.

I'm not knowledgeable enough with JS to help you with a more elaborate JS solution, if there is one, but possibly someone here in the community will chip in.

Additionally, some of the workarounds using Google Docs come to mind, but the problem with that solution is a lot of times we don't want user data stored out in the public domain.

Good luck, I'm interested in seeing if you get a solution.

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