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
Greetings. I have recently noticed when I publish courses in SL360 to SCORM 2004 v 3 and upload to Cornerstone that the courses are no longer able to be viewed in IE 11 (you get a blank screen). I am aware there was a big Storyline update on 3/23 and courses that I have uploaded prior to 3/23 still work fine (they were published as HTML5 only). Of course all courses pre and post 3/23 work in Chrome but we still have some users in the organization who are using IE 11 for other legacy applications and as a default browser. Has anyone else experienced this or have a solution?
We had this issue. Now launching the LMS has been programmed to force it to open with Edge only. It's only launched from inside OurHRConnect by clicking on the LMS Icon. The users can still use IE for legacy software applications that were created in-house decades ago.
I also experiencing issues with Internet Explorer not displaying information properly. IE end of life is August 17, 2021. Thus, we are directing our users to use Chrome as their browser for CSOD.
The Microsoft Teams web app no longer supports IE 11 as of November 30, 2020.
Beginning August 17, 2021, Microsoft services will no longer support IE 11.
Hi - I'm getting errors when trying to modify an existing course on Cornerstone. The error comes when I upload the zip file. It looks like this was discussed earlier in this group, but I did not see a solution. How do I fix this?
Thank you!!!
In my experience, the errors you have specifically included in your attached image file are normal. They are just warning you that there were, in fact, changes to your files. When I see these my reaction is usually, "of course these files changed."
Whew! Okay, I will move forward. Thank you VERY much for your speedy reply!!
You're welcome. Another thing to know about modifying... you won't see the changes right away when the course modification says it is complete. It can take hours.
Users who have launched the course previously tend to see the changes much later than users who haven't launched it yet. So I usually test the modified course logged in under a test user account that hasn't launched the course before.
Good to know (and also a bummer). Thank you again.
Hello, Heroes! I'm hoping you can help with an issue we are having. I've created three simulation-based assessments in Storyline 360, rendered them in SCORM 2004 3rd edition, and have loaded each of them to Cornerstone On Demand. When a user take the assessment and fails, they can retake the assessment up to 3 times within the assessment, meaning, they just go back to the beginning and take it again. I am aware that only the final attempt will be recorded in this case.
What I'd like to do is set it up so that all of the attempts and their respective data (answers, clicks, etc.) are recorded. This would mean they would setting it up so that they would need to have the assessment marked as complete, and then re-request the assessment. I tested this yesterday, and only the data from the second attempt was saved.
I know others have posted about this issue before. Has anyone found a way for CSOD to retain all attempts of a Storyline 360 simulation-based assessment?
As an aside, I did find out that Rise 360 retains all attempts of an assessment without the learner having to be marked as complete. (Woot woot!)
Hello all,
We are beginning to utilize the Pre-Check feature in Storyline 360 as a way for a learner to "test out" of learning and we want to see if there's a way we can distinguish in our LMS (we use Cornerstone) whether a learner passed/completed the Pre-Check versus the Final Assessment. So far, we haven't been able to find a variable in Cornerstone's report builder that corresponds to a specific results page in SL. Are any of you using Cornerstone as your LMS and experiencing/experienced something similar?
So far the only variable we've been able to identify in Cornerstone's report builder that would give us that information is the "Quiz Question ID" variable which gives us the scene and slide number. We can then deduce which assessment was completed by the learner (Pre or Post test), but I was wondering if there's another variable that wouldn't require an IDD person to refer back to the original SL source file to identify the scene/slide number.
Thanks!
Two ways I can think of to do this. One is by submitting a custom xAPI statement, publishing the output as xAPI, that flags the specific way it was completed. The other is by adding a question that submits an open value in SCORM 2004 that you could search for by answer value. This would involve adding a hidden question and using triggers to set the value, adding it to submit for your results slide. You'd need to adjust the score values for your invisible submission to make sure it doesn't affect the score.
This should give you a way to query by that value in your report.
I've done something like this by finding a unique pattern in the SCO Suspend Data field.
Our Cybersecurity Department wanted to know who had skipped to the end of a module and taken the quiz instead of watching the material. I found that if I mimicked this behavior and looked at the Suspend Data that there was this unique pattern that wasn't there for someone who viewed all of the slides.
I figured out at the time what the numbers meant, it has someone to do with the order slides are viewed. Anyway once I found this pattern, I created a Calculated Field that looked for it:
Worked great!
It was bugging me that I couldn't remember what that string meant so I found my old post:
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/storyline-suspend_data-decipher?page=2#reply-755218
Also, if you want to learn the intricacies of suspend data, Michael Richey wrote an amazing article here: https://www.richeyweb.com/blog/23-personal-blog/130-a-brain-exercise-scorm-xapi
Then again, interpreting suspend data is a dark art, so you might want to go with one of Steve's ideas. This was a case where they wanted to know who skipped to the quiz AFTER the module was already published and taken!
We use Cornerstone as well, and are exploring xAPI statements. We have discovered that the reporting for xAPI in Cornerstone does not exist, except for some clients in a Beta format. They have an xAPI statement viewer that has filters - we've only got that feature turned on in our CSOD Pilot site - but it's rather clunky. We are trying to determine how to export that data into a tool that can manage it more efficiently. Just wanted to share in case you decide to go the xAPI route.
Steve, is it possible to do this with a course that was created in RISE rather than Storyline as it doesn't seem to work?
(PS. I'm aware I'm replying to a post that is 4 years old :))
Hi Chris -
You wouldn't be able to put custom statements directly into Rise. But with some creative Javascript, you could make it work in a Storyline block. Since Storyline is embedded in the same structure, you should have access to the DOM outside of the iFrame to read in the endpoint and employ the same API connection to inject statements in whatever form you want.
Steve, thanks for getting back to me. Custom Javascript is way above my ability but thanks for the reply. Loved your previous post on how to do it for storyline courses
Your previous (4 years ago) response for anyone else
Are you wanting to track progress or just display the content? If you are just wanting to display the content, here's how you can grab the launch point of the story.html file:
1) Launch the content after registering the LO in Chrome (this can also be done in other browsers but the steps are a little different)
2) When the content launches, select the address bar and hit CTRL-SHIFT-J. This will open developer tools.
3) Click the sources tab in the Developer Tools window.
4) Expand the activityFrame item, then expand the xxxx.csod.com item. Expand the content folder that ends in publications/xxx.
5) Scroll down until you see index_lms_html5.html or index_lms.html (depending on how you published)
6) Right-click the index_xxx.html item and Copy Link Address.
It will look something like this:
https://xxxx.csod.com/content/xxxx/publications/677/index_lms_html5.html
Change the index_lms_html5 or index_lms to story.
https://xxxx.csod.com/content/xxxx/publications/677/story.html
Now you can use the direct link in your iframe and the content should display right on the page. It won't track but it will display.
Hi Everyone,
I know this has been answered but I looked through (admittedly skimmed) through the 34 pages of this discussion and I can see to find a solution.
We have a monthly training in which our users will watch a video followed by a two-question survey. We published this in Storyline 3 in SCORM 2004 v3 and uploaded to Cornerstone. That being said, Cornerstone is not tracking the questions and answers. What settings am I missing from Cornerstone and/or Storyline to make it possible to retrieve the survey data into CSOD's reporting.
We do have SCORM 2004 reporting featured, enabled by GPS.
Thank you!
Hi Karoline,
Is this issue specific to this course? Are you able to track answers from other courses in Cornerstone? Is your course tracked by quiz results? We'd love to look into your course files to see if we can see the cause of the issue. Would you mind opening a support case via http://articulatecase.com? Please share your published ZIP and also your .STORY file as well. Thanks!
Hi John,
Thank you for your reply back! This course would be the first of its kind in our Cornerstone portal to track specific results. Up until now, we have published only SCORM 1.2 courses with only the ability to pull the quiz score. Pretty much I'm starting from scratch and I'm sure I'm missing specific settings in CSOD and Storyline in order to publish a SCORM 2004 v2 and pull question and answers into CSOD, however I can't seem to figure out which specific settings I'm missing. Any thoughts here?
Thank you!
I am following this to see what others say. My understanding is that Cornerstone doesn't receive / store individual questions/responses. It just gets the complete/incomplete or pass/fail and the quiz score. I would love it if this can work, so am very interested in seeing how this evolves.
Another note, last I checked, Cornerstone recommends SCORM 2004 3rd edition (not 2nd). I don't think that makes much difference, though.
Hi Karoline,
CSOD recommends the 3rd edition, but I had issues with that. I use the 4th edition. Publish with the setting Complete/Incomplete. On your results slide, make sure you choose Calculate Results for Questions, and make sure that every question you want to report to CSOD is checked. I've found this can be fickle. If you make a change to a question or even visit it, it can uncheck the question. So, I have just gotten in the habit of checking the results slide to make sure everything is still checked just before I publish it. Hope that helps.
So, where can you see the question by question results in CSOD?
You just need to create a Training Report. I'm currently using Custom Reports. I haven't transitioned my report over to 2.0 yet. I've attached a snip of the fields I pull for our participants to collect their data. The Excel sheet it pulls works perfectly for us.
Thank you! This could be a game changer for us if I was just misinformed. Yay!