Everything we know about Cornerstone on Demand and Storyline!

Sep 04, 2013

I thought I would start a thread about Cornerstone on Demand so there's a central place for people to read and add to. There seems to be a dearth of information about how CSOD and Storyline interact with each other as well as the unresolved issues surrounding it. I've spent many hours scouring the web and speaking with Cornerstone trying to find a solution. Hopefully this thread will serve as a resource for others going forward.

On a side note, I love Articulate Storyline. I started with Adobe Captivate with limited success. It was a very steep learning curve, but I was able to get some basic functionality out of it. I tested out Storyline with it's 30 day trial, and I will say that time-to-effectiveness was drastically reduced. It really IS like using powerpoint. Granted there is less complex functionality and interactions available than Captivate, but so far it's given me everything I've needed to use. The benefit is that the learning curve is much less steep too. Think of it as the difference between iMovie and Final Cut Pro. The latter can do some crazy effects, but the former gives you 90% of what you need and can get you comfortable in 1/4 of the time.

It's nice to have a properly-working content creation tool when you're in an LMS like Cornerstone. I have enough trouble in CSOD as it is.

So some of the nuggets of wisdom that I've found are :

  • Cornerstone does not track SCORM 1.2 content properly. You cannot pull a lot of the reports if they are not in SCORM 2004 format. You don't have the option to select that course in the reports.
  • If you export into SCORM 2004, there will be an extra section on the left with text links to the module. This takes up 30% of the screen, and on smaller laptop screens may crowd out the module window. Cornerstone says this is a Storyline exporting settings issue. I couldn't find any settings that shows/hides that section. The workaround is to resize the module to the screen, which doesn't get rid of the section, but at least fits the module.
  • When reporting, you can get the completion status for a course based on quiz result or last slide viewed. You can also get a final grade for course. Storyline passes the results information for each question (including short answer) but you cannot pull a list of the answers for an individual. Therefore, it may not be advisable to administer any testing where you'll need to review individual answers
  • You can get a list of aggregate answers for a module. e.g. I can see how 100 employees answered this multiple choice question. This is helpful to determine if learners are absorbing the course information correctly.
  • Web objects (such as websites, or links to sharepoint documents) work in modules if your IT has added csod.com to the trusted sites
  • Popup windows that open up the articulate module in CSOD will work if you add csod.com to the allowed list for popup blockers. Your IT dept can also add this to everyone's computer. Otherwise when learners click the "launch" button, the module does not show up.

I'll post more as I think or find them, but feel free to add to this list!

906 Replies
Will Findlay

Back to the topic of Cornerstone... I am trying to to use Cornerstone's Course Assessment Question Item Analysis standard report on one of my Articulate Storyline modules. However, all of the test questions are each split out three times in the report, e.g.:

Scene6_QuestionDraw11_Slide1_MultiChoice_0_0
Scene6_QuestionDraw11_Slide1_MultiChoice_1_0
Scene6_QuestionDraw11_Slide1_MultiChoice_2_0

Clearer version of the screen image

So to use this report I would have to add these numbers back up for each of the three rows of each question. It is the same question, but takes up three rows. Has anyone encountered this / knows why it is doing this / knows how to fix this? (Note that it is also doing this for True/False, so it isn't creating a row per response item).

Will Findlay

Unfortunately there has been only one version of the course published, so that probably isn't it.

A colleague suggested that each row might indicate a different question attempt. That seems feasible. The only problem there is that this test only gives the user one attempt per question. It does, however, allow the user to retake the assessment at the end if they fail.

In that case though you would expect the Response number to be the same for each question because upon retaking the assessment, the user would have to reanswer all of the questions, not just a subset.

Will Findlay

Looks like this post has the answer: 

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/quiz-data-sent-to-lms-more-info-on-string

The first number is {Quiz Attempts} and the second number is {Question Attempts}. I don't allow people more than one Question Attempt on this quiz, but I do allow unlimited Quiz Attempts.

Now I just have to figure out why that Responses number goes down on each Quiz Attempt (since they have to retake the entire quiz, it seems it should be the same each time). Also, why always three Quiz attempts? Third time isn't always the charm I would assume!

Will Findlay

I think I figured it out - the Responses number goes down each time because one set of learners only had to take the entire quiz 1 time (passed on the first attempt), another set had to take the quiz 2 times, and the third set had to take it 3 times. Thats why it is always 40, 11, and then 1 for each question (29 passed it the first time, 10 the second time, and1 the last time).

Steve Flowers

That's useful. I'm a new CSOD admin. We're going live in a little under 3 weeks after starting up about 3 weeks ago. Fun times. So far so good. 

So in MultChoice_X_Y, are you thinking that X is the attempt number for the quiz? If the question was allowed multiple attempts to get right, the Y would be the number of question attempts?

Never looked at the way the identifier was generated. This makes sense. 

Will Findlay

So in MultChoice_X_Y, are you thinking that X is the attempt number for the quiz? If the question was allowed multiple attempts to get right, the Y would be the number of question attempts?

Steve, that is exactly what I am seeing. And can I just say, I'm so glad to see Steve Flowers will be a Cornerstone user now too!

Will Findlay

Just found out that in this October's release of Cornerstone that a slew of SCORM 2004 fields were added to Custom Reports! I haven't had a chance to test them yet (plus, I just learned we have to contact Global support to have this turned on), but hopefully this will make it much easier to pull quiz data from Storyline courses in Cornerstone, especially when you just want to filter for one person, for example. Here are the relevant links to the help sections (requires that you are logged in to Cornerstone to view):

Add SCORM 2004 Fields to Custom Reports - Overview

Add SCORM 2004 Fields to Custom Reports - SCORM 2004 Quiz Data Fields

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi BK,

What is occurring when you try to open the course within your iPad? Do you see it launch in Safari or does it just spin or not seeming able to even open the browser? I don't know much about the Cornerstone set up and how it would behave with an iPad - but if it wasn't working entirely, I think we may have seen more about that! 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi BK,

I'm not sure which menu you're referring too - but have you reached out to Cornerstone in regards to this as well? I know that this forum discussion has gotten quite long in regards to Cornerstone but as others have shared here it seems to be a specific issue with Cornerstone loading as we're not seeing the same issues within other LMSs when testing on the iPad. 

Rachel Craig

Hello,

I seem to remember another user having this issues, but I'm failing to find it. I published a course this morning, and when I went to preview it in Cornerstone, this giant, ugly menu showed up, as seen in the attached picture. I thought it was something on Cornerstone's end. Can someone tell me how to get rid of it, please?

Thank you,

Rachel

Sheila Bulthuis

Rachel, I've seen that left-side menu with two different clients using Cornerstone. It's specific to SCORM 2004 and related to a back-end setting that they need to change for you. In my experience, they'll say it's a content-specific issue, but it's not - you just have t be persistent.  =) I think a lot of the support people at CSOD don't know about it, so they have to research how to fix it. But it can absolutely be fixed by them changing that back-end setting (I don't know the name of it).

Rachel Craig

Hi, Sheila,

Ah, that would be why I am just seeing the issue now. This is the first course I've published with SCROM 2004. Previously, I used SCROM 1.2, I'm thinking because I saw this issue pop up somewhere else. Didn't know it was a back end issue on Cornerstone's end. I will be persistent about getting this back end setting changed.

Thanks,

Rachel

Rachel Craig
Sheila Cole-Bulthuis

I've seen that left-side menu with two different clients using Cornerstone. It's specific to SCORM 2004 and related to a back-end setting that they need to change for you. In my experience, they'll say it's a content-specific issue, but it's not

Shelia, I just got a e-mail from Cornerstone saying it's an issue on my end, that I didn't check the menu box correctly. I sent them a screen shot of how I set up it correctly in Storyline, and I included the quote from you above. Thank you so much! Waiting for a reply from Cornerstone now.

-Rachel

Barry Hinks

Hi All Cornerstone experts, I've raised an issue I'm encountered in a new post, not realising this thread existed.

To save writing this out in this post can anyone help shed some light on my issue.

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/storyline-recording-in-cornerstone-the-minimum-score-achievable-based-on-number-of-assessment-questions#reply-394894

 Thanks

Steve Flowers

Hi, B K - 

I've had success running the HTML5 output. The new SL360 provides the option to just publish to HTML5 without the Flash publish.

If you're having trouble in IE, give this a shot. In the General tab of the catalog properties page for the online class LO, make sure compatibility is turned off. 

Will Findlay

Steve, your post made me wonder if SL360's HTML5 output was compatible with I.E. (SL2's output is not) I did some digging and was pleasantly surprised to see that it does, at least if your user is on a version greater than IE9: https://articulate.com/support/article/Comparing-HTML5-Flash-and-Articulate-Mobile-Player-Output-for-Articulate-Storyline-360