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
This is a back end setting that CSOD has to turn off for you. See this previous post in this thread for more info: https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/everything-we-know-about-cornerstone-on-demand-and-storyline#reply-92053
Basically, this Table of Contents is there in case you want to use Multi-SCO SCORM objects, something almost nobody does (except I did see it done in Medicare training recently). It is a global setting, so if you either have to have it on for all SCORM 2004 courses or no SCORM 2004 courses. As you can accomplish the same thing as Multi-SCO by using a Cornerstone Curricula, I see no reason to keep it turned on unless you have training in a Multi-SCO format I guess.
We found an interesting issue testing Storyline 360 courses in Cornerstone where the courses kept minimizing every time a slide would auto-advance. We were able to isolate the issue and it was a simple fix.
First, it only happened when all of the following variables were present:
• Storyline 360 courses
• Auto-advance slides
• Published HTML5 with Flash fallback
• Loaded into Cornerstone (it did not occur in SCORM Cloud)
• Launched in IE browser
All we had to change was the publish setting to Flash with HTML5 fallback
I thought I'd share in case anyone else comes across that issue. We were relieved it was easy to correct.
Thanks for popping in to share Natalia :)
We use those settings and we don't have this issue in IE so I'm wondering if it is an IE version specific issue. What version of IE are you using? Our users are on IE 11.
Also, you should be aware that setting a course to Flash first then HTML5 can cause issues for Google Chrome users. Newer versions of Chrome will display a puzzle piece saying that the content requires you to right-click to run it.
Another thing to check might be the Storyline player settings. We found we had to set the player not to scale to the full size of the user's screen when we moved to Cornerstone. That seemed to conflict with Cornerstone's own full-window resizing function.
Thanks Will- we'll check those
We launched in Cornerstone this spring and ran a group of users through our new member orientation with nearly 30 modules and tests and had no issues. We made no updates to our content/quizzes before the next group launched a few weeks ago (after the last Cornerstone software release) and we are starting to get reports from students of the multiple select questions from Quizmaker not being properly scored. They basically have the correct answers but they aren't being recognized. We can't determine yet if its' because Articulate isn't tracking it correctly (thought it was working previously so that doesn't entirely make sense). The problem seems to be occurring with Firefox and it has been suggested it might be a security issues in Firefox. Since we changes nothing in our Articulate / Quizmaker files, we're struggling to find the source of the issue. We had one report of the problem about 2 weeks ago and then another one last night which we have been able to replicate in multiple quizzes today.
Anyone encountering this issue? Any thoughts or suggestions for troubleshooting. Would appreciate any insights.
Amy,
It's likely a browser or Cornerstone issue. We use Storyline, not Articulate Desktop and haven't had an issue with multiple select questions. If it is not happening to everyone, there is NOTHING wrong with your course. Here's what I would do to troubleshoot it:
1. Ask anyone reporting a problem whether they are working on a PC or Mac, what browser they are using and version of the browser.
2. Test the course on SCORM Cloud -- https://scorm.com/scorm-solved/scorm-cloud-features/ (it's free for what you are doing) with all the browsers you are using (or know people are using) - IE, Chrome, Safari (if Mac), Firefox, etc. - because you can't test every single browser/version, try to find out first what those having an issue were using
a. If they all work on SCORM cloud, you know it is a Cornerstone issue and you have some leverage with them on it being a problem with how the course is running within Cornerstone
b. If you find the issue on SCORM cloud, you will know the browser(s) and versions where the issue is occurring
Best of luck ... these random issues are tough ones to troubleshoot and get resolution on!
If the symptoms are something like "I clicked this but it registered something different or didn't display the proper score" then it's not an LMS problem. If it's recording the right score within the Articulate package but not recording score or recording an improper score, then it's possibly an LMS issue.
Based on your screenshot, this is NOT an LMS issue. This is displayed entirely on the client side. Since it's intermittent, it's going to be hard to troubleshoot but it's likely not something you've done. A logic bug in the player. Pass it on to the Articulate team and they might be able to take a look or recommend a fix.
We've seen a few player specific issues with selection and drag and drop. Most of these are screen lockups and they rarely appear. Makes it impossible to troubleshoot consistently but even a .01% occurrence can make people distrust the content and the LMS.
I agree with Steve. Based on your screenshot, something is wrong with Quizmaker.
The reason I don't think it's Quizmaker is that these exact same learning objects have been up and running in Cornerstone and were well test at the time of publication in Feb and only in the last two weeks have users started to report issues that we have also been able to now replicate (on the same computers/user IDs that they worked seamlessly on back in Feb). Nothing in those files has changed.
I would echo the sentiments of the group that this sounds more like a Quizmaker issue. Any recent updates to your machines/browsers? Is your version of Quizmaker 100% updated? We have seen Flash updates mess with course behavior in the past and often it was due to out of date software or updated browsers/machines.
Hi Amy,
What version of Quizmaker are you using? Do you know if the folks getting the odd scoring behavior are viewing the content in Flash or HTML5 within the browser? Have those same users been able to test in any other browsers?
If you'd like our team to take a look - we're always happy too! Just upload a copy of the .quiz file here and we can test in SCORM Cloud to and help determine where the issue may be.
I would also look at the publishing/tracking/reporting in Quizmaker.
Thanks for your suggestions. Since we had not changed anything in our files I was curious to see if anyone else was having this issue. Sounds like not and we're going to have to start at the beginning and troubleshoot the files from scratch again. Was hopefully there might be a simpler solution. Thanks for all the ideas.
We're working in Quiz "13. I'm not sure about the Flash versus HTML 5 but I'm guessing Flash. One of our users was having the most difficulty in Firefox but also had issues in Chrome (on her phone). We've been able to replicate the errors in FF so I thought we had isolated it to FF, but we since learned that another user had all the same issues but in Chrome and i was able to replicate the error in a Quiz in Chrome as well.
I just updated all my Articulate stuff and but haven't republished anything yet. We are having the issue in multiple quizzes, but here's one that has been reported more than once and we could replicate the problem. Again, the problem seems to be isolated to the multiple select questions.
if there's anything obvious you notice, we'd certainly appreciate any help.
Hi Amy,
Thanks for sharing your file. I gave it a test by uploading to SCORM Cloud here. I took that quiz and although my scoring was abysmal - it was accurate. :-) I also did the Review and noted that the ones that I did get correct were marked as such with the review banner.
Can you give it a try and let me know how that behaves for you?
Hi, Ashley -
When I've seen problems with scoring feedback it happened when I clicked and unclicked multiple items. This might be the root of it. If there is an intermittent issue registering a selection / unselection, that would explain the behavior in the screenshot.
I've seen this over the years and in Storyline I used a workaround. I know QM uses a bit different setup but I suspect there's some similarity within the player assembly.
Hello All,
My company is looking into purchasing Articulate 360. We are currently utilizing Articulate 13. Will Articulate 360 allow the user access the quiz, receive a score and review missed questions and exit and Once they exit, user does not to have access again. Our issue with Articulate 13, the user can access quiz, receive a score, review quiz to see missed questions and close. But they still can access the quiz again after they've viewed it once. All this is accomplished in Cornerstone. I do not want them to have access to the quiz after their first attempt. Any help or idea? If not we will have to look into another program such as Lectora. Thank you, I'm at my wits end with this.
Hi, Sasha -
You should be able to accomplish what you want to do in Storyline 1, 2, or 360. By setting the module to always resume and by preventing access / navigation to a section (quiz) the user will be unable to take the quiz again or even see it if that's what you want.
This is the source file for the active quiz running in Cornerstone that is giving our students problems. Both students who reported issues (one in Firefox and one in Goggle) reported that they were able to complete the quiz with no issues in IE so it sounds like there's a browser update issue of some kind. Will dive in more deeply today.
Hi Sasha,
I'd agree with Steve's recommendation that you could set this to always resume and then within Storyline follow the steps here to limit the quiz attempts again.
If you want to lock down access to the course overall again - i'd defer to your Learning Management System (LMS) team for additional information and ideas.
Hi Amy,
Were you able to test the SCORM Cloud link as well, or let those users test it too? It looks like Steve had run into the issue when clicking and unclicking an option - is that something that your colleagues have seen?
or just use the Cornerstone test engine for the quiz. We sometimes create a curriculum that contains a module as the first item, and a Cornerstone Test as the second item.
I am currently working with SL2. We are trying to create a Curriculum in CSOD that has a workflow if the person fails a course (dependent on the results of a quiz) they fall into a group with the criteria set to Failed. If the person passes they fall into a separate group with the criteria set to Complete. We are not getting this to function properly and have only randomly gotten people to fall into the passed group. We are working with CSOD but they do not seem to know much about SL. Can anyone suggest what SCORM I should publish in (1.2 or 2004) edition (2nd or 3rd) and what reporting LMS reporting status to use (Passed/Incomplete, Passed/Failed), Completed/Incomplete, Completed/Failed). Any help provided would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.