End of Learning Activity Pop-Up Before Results Page Can Be Viewed

Aug 27, 2012

I am using Storyline with SumTotal LMS 7.5. The Storyline file is linear with a few pages of content followed by a short quiz and a results page. I am using SCORM 1.2, Complete/Incomplete, and I've tried tracking by both page views and the results page.

Here's the issue: At the beginning of the timeline for the results page, the user recieves a pop-up from the LMS indicating they have reached the end of the learning activity. The pop-up is received before the results page fully loads and is covering it once it does. The user can click Continue, which exits the activity, or Cancel, which closes the pop-up and leaves them on the results page; however, that isn't very clear in the instructions on the pop-up. As a result, our users have thus far interpreted the pop-up in one of two ways: 1) They've seen everything there is to see, and clicking Continue to let them exit the activity, or 2) As a prompt that they are getting ready to "submit" their answers, and clicking Continue will take them to their results. Either way, they are all clicking Continue and exiting the activity before they can see the results page.

I realize that the pop-up is from the LMS, but is there a way I can either change the timing of the communication from Storyline that is triggering the LMS to return the pop-up (ie: when the user clicks on an Exit button, or, at the very least, at the end of the results page timeline instead of the beginning) or work around this with specific settings, triggers, buttons, or combination thereof?

I appreciate any suggestions or ideas. Thanks!

13 Replies
Mike Enders

Holly,

I'm trying to think this through a bit....

I'm curious..are you allowing your learners to retake the quiz?  If so, does this pop up still appear at the beginning of the timeline?   If you're not doing this, could you try it and see what happens?  I'm trying to think of a couple approaches, but need a little more info about how your LMS is behaving.

Mike

Matthew Graham

I use Moodle, but I would think there would be an option within SumTotal to turn off the pop-up all together. 

Otherwise, it may pop-up as soon as the timeline ends on the result slide.  What if you added an additional slide after the results with some branding, a thank you, review, or preview of the next subject? 

Holly  Fuemmeler

Mike: I am allowing retakes, and the pop-up still appears at the beginning of the results page.

Matthew: I don't have the ability to turn control the pop-ups from SumTotal, but thank you for the suggestion.

The pop-up, itself, isn't a problem. It's the timing. It would be optimal if I could get Storyline to send the communication that is triggering it when the user clicks to exit the activity instead of when the user meets the completion threshold that is set in Storyline.

Thanks!

Holly

Mike Enders

My first thought...and I have no idea if this would work (and I'm likely overthinking it)....

I wonder if there is a way to add a duplicate results slide...the first acts as a placeholder to show them their results, allow them to retake, etc....and then a 2nd results slide that has the same info, but is what you direct the LMS to pay attention to?

Or what if you a trigger to pause the timeline of the results slide as the timeline starts.  Would that stop the communication to the LMS?

*Mike wishes he were an LMS guru. Where's Gerry Waz and Brian Allen when he needs them?*

Brian Allen

Mike Enders said:

*Mike wishes he were an LMS guru. Where's Gerry Waz and Brian Allen when he needs them?*

LOL, Brian Allen??  Brian's been putting out SumTotal fires all day, but I FINALLY made it here   Sorry for the delay!

Holly, we're using SumTotal 8.7, but I don't believe that version has anything to do with the behavior you're seeing.  For me to troubleshoot, I'd really like to see your story file - is it possible that you could share it?

Holly  Fuemmeler

Mike, thank you for your suggestions. They were very useful in helping me think through this. I did test them, but the ability/inability to retake doesn't appear to be related to this issue.

Brian, I can send you the file, but I think I've solved the problem. I'm providing it below in case it might be helpful to someone else. I'm still open to other suggestions if you think there is a better way to handle this. Let me know if you still want to see the story file.

On the results page, there is a default Slide Trigger for Submit Results when the timeline starts. I had previously assumed that it was for calculating the quiz score so it could be displayed on the the page. Nevertheless, I modified it by moving it to a button I created with an "on click" action. It worked!

Here's what I did: I created an Exit button on the results page with an "on click" trigger for "exit course." Then, I modified the existing default Submit Results trigger by changing the When from "timeline starts" to "on click" and changing the Object to the Exit button. Since the Exit button has two triggers, I made sure they were in this order: 1) Submit Results and then 2) Exit Course. If not, Exit course gets executed before submit results, resulting in an Incomplete status in SumTotal. With this setup, the results page displays just fine, and after the Exit button is clicked, the user recieves the SumTotal pop-up for the end of the learning activity (signifying that the completion information/results have been received by the LMS).

As a side note, since I previously mentioned that I thought the Submit Results trigger was associated with calculating the results that display on the results page, it apparently has nothing to do with that. Even with the triggers configured the way I now have them, the results still display on the page as they did before I moved the trigger.

Thanks!

Holly

Brian Allen

Holly, so glad to hear that you were able to solve it by moving the trigger, which totally makes sense!

What doesn't make sense is the trigger sending the results at the beginning of the timeline...  Now you're going to make me go back and look at some of the other courses I've already launched in SumTotal.  I know I don't have this problem with them, but I'm interested in seeing what's different about how/where the submit trigger is set.

Thanks for posting your findings here, I know it will be very helpful for others!

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Cristian,

This thread is a bit older - so a) I'm not certain that folks are still subscribed and b) that the issues here may not be connected to your experience based on older versions/updates. 

If you use the "retry" element on a failure layer, the results will be reset within Storyline - but they may have already been passed to your LMS. It'll be up to the LMS to determine how the results are calculated and tracked.

As for the exit button, there aren't visible triggers associated with it. But the results are sent to the LMS at the start of the results slide and you should see that trigger on the slide. As far as exiting and resetting - those elements are not tied to the button. If a user reentered the course and you had allowed them to resume, the course is not reset nor are the results. 

cristian tomaszewski


Hello, the problem persists, in LMS sumtotal, only with IE. This according to our client informs us.
What is the problem? When they reach the "last screen", they just see that last screen and the pop up in question appears.
This also happens if they hit a result screen. and not to mention when they reach a result screen and has the button to try again, since of course this popup also appears on the first attempt, not allowing you new ones.
It is clear that it is something of sumtotal and IE, but it would be good to know how to solve it in order to give a solution to our client.
for now the only possible "easy" option was adding a hidden screen, so that the LMS does not yet recognize that the course was finished. And in the final screen we add the trigger "completed".

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Cristian,

Thanks for the additional details. Based on the image, your LMS seems to be using a completion and success status, since the user failed.

Which reporting option did you use when publishing your course? Both Passed/Incomplete and Passed/Failed are more likely to record both completion and success statuses. Here is some documentation that explains it a bit further.

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