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!

894 Replies
Chris Undery

Hi James and thanks for replying, we don't specify anywhere in Storyline that the course should open in a popup. Don't seem to be able to open any elearning, irrespective of what software or settings were used to publish it. Trying to work out if its an authoring tool issue (doubtful) or a CSOD issue or something to do with the way our IT have set up the secured corporate mobile browser

Jamie Wenzel

Hi Chris,

I had the exact same behavior happen to me when trying to open up any elearning using the OKTA mobile app because it launched in their own built-in browser that didn't support it playing eLearning's on Mobile.  My solution is just to have them use the Cornerstone app instead of the browser.  Elearning's in Cornerstone automatically launch in a new browser window no matter what you do, so you can't change that.  You can specify in preferences full window, 800x600 window, or just a new tab though.  However, I don't think any of those preferences will will probably help your situation.  I would suggest trying other browsers and seeing if you can get it to work.  If you can, then you know it is the browser causing the problem.  It may have to do with pop-up blocker or it may just be that your browser is out of date and doesn't support mobile eLearning's.    

Chris Undery

Jamie, Unfortunately we are having security issues with getting the actual Learn app on corporate kit (fingers crossed will get it eventually but we also wanted to allow people to access via the browser (especially the performance side of CSOD). The browser is controlled by IT but I think its current and elearning run through the Review 360 tool works fine on it. Thanks for the info

Jamie Wenzel

Interesting...so it works fine through the same browser using Review 360, but it breaks when in Cornerstone.  There are two distinct differences that I can think of: 1. In Cornerstone you are launching a SCORM package, while in review I believe it is just published as a webpage.  2. Cornerstone launches SCORM in a new window and establishes a Javascript API to communicate progress back to the LMS which could be causing the problem.  In order to eliminate the pop-up window being blocked as the cause, I wonder what would happen if you change the launch settings in the player menu to launch player in new window, and then publish to Review 360 and see what happens.  If the pop-up launches in Review 360 without being blocked, then we have eliminated that as being the possible cause.  Also, as Articulate always suggests, did you try testing it in SCORM cloud and on your browser to see what happens?  Again, that could help eliminate the browser itself being the issue.  In SCORM cloud you could select to pop up in a new window as well as setting the player launch type as "Frameset".  Someone from Cornerstone told me to try those settings in SCORM cloud.  

Gemma Wells

Has anyone set up pre course scnario assessments - whereby if the learner passes the module completes and they dont need to work through the whole elearn but if they fail they get forced through the elearn content. At the min we run assessments outside of storyline and have two LO's showing in a curriculm. I cant see how I can build a pre test in cornerstone that will then complete the module if they pass

Patrick Plante

A new type of critical error started to appear in the SCORM Uploader when I try to upload Rise courses that have Storyline elements in it.  

Multi standards (AICC/ SCORM/ xAPI) are not allowed in one file. Please create a separate file per each (AICC or SCORM or xAPI) and try again.

All other Rise courses that don't have Storyline components are working as expected. 

Has anyone else encountered this?

James Bonney

Sorry Gemma, I didn't explain it very well, if I've understood your request...

Module A = A test built in Storyline/Rise et al

Module B & C = 2 different modules in your curriculum.

If user passes Module A and gets a completed record, then you can get CSOD to mark modules B and C complete automatically by setting them as completed equivalent courses. I don't see why that wouldn't work?

Patrick Plante
Patrick Plante

A new type of critical error started to appear in the SCORM Uploader when I try to upload Rise courses that have Storyline elements in it.  

Multi standards (AICC/ SCORM/ xAPI) are not allowed in one file. Please create a separate file per each (AICC or SCORM or xAPI) and try again.

All other Rise courses that don't have Storyline components are working as expected. 

Has anyone else encountered this?

I found an answer in a separate thread so I thought I would share here. Hopefully this is a temporary issue.

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/rise-360/storyline-block-in-rise-exported-for-cornerstone

Steve Flowers

Hi Roni. Deleting the tincan.xml files from the zip should fix the problem until Cornerstone or Articulate find a way to handle it.

1) Unzip the SCORM file. 

2) Search the unzipped folder for tincan.xml. 

3) Delete the tincan.xml files that return in the search. 

4) Rezip the contents of the unzipped file, ensuring that the imsmanifest file is at the root of the zip.

** If you don't remove the tincan.xml files from the imsmanifest file, you'll get warnings for every missing file. Not a big deal. It'll still upload. 

Chris Undery

Thanks Jamie, I had a go changing the player to 'launch player in new window'  then uploaded to both our LMS & Review 360. Both launched and ran as before but oddly I didn't get a launch screen, all I got was a separate tab with a launch button on it . It also did this through SCORM cloud.  Need to keep digging.

eLearning Developer

Hi Jon,

If you select "none" for the SCORM mechanism, what are you able to track? Granted the LMS should track access to the module, but what type of score displays in Cornerstone when selecting "none"?

I'm interested, in particular, to know if modules created using Rise 360 (reactive design) will work for tracking in CSOD .

Thank you!

Kate

Daniel Carroll

I posted an issue I'm having as a new topic here...but thought i might be able to get a quicker reply on this discussion: 

Has anyone run into an issue using the lightbox functionality with CSOD in IE?

I have created courses using lightboxes and they work perfectly in Chrome but when you click the lightbox link in IE, the window collapses to the background (doesn't close or crash, just moves to the background) and my end users are assuming the course is crashing and trying to start it over. I haven't been able to find any evidence that this is a known issue or if it's just something happening with our CSOD. 

We are using IE version 11.0.110 

Chris Undery

Hi all, we have a simple 25 question quiz where we are sending the individual scores through to be reported in CSOD. The questions are split into 4 topics areas so that we can then point the learners to relevant materials to help in topics they are weak on.  I'm quite happy in setting up Storyline to display topic scores inside the learning (variable per topic) but was wondering if there is any way to send this information through so its reportable in CSOD (ie. The report can identify which topic each question is in relation to).

The only option I can currently think of is to include the topic name in the question stem so that the 'quiz question description' include sit in the CSOD report. We could then manually sort/filter to see info per topic.  This will work but is a bit manual.

Any ideas/observations appreciated.