How to use the "cmi.progress_measure" to track the progress in a course ?

Nov 13, 2014

Hi,

I need to track the progress in a course in a LMS.

In SCORM 2004 the progress is transmitted from the content to the LMS through the variable : cmi.progress_measure.

However, Presenter and Storyline don't use this variable. We can only track the completion status using the number of slide viewed or the quiz result.

 

So my questions are :

  • Why Ariculate doesn't use the "cmi.progress_measure" ?
  • Why Articulate is SCORM 2004 conformant without using this SCORM variable ?
  • Is there any solution to track the progress in a course and not only the completion ?
  • In Captivate (Adobe),  it is possible to add a javascript code to do that. Can we do that with Storyline?

Thanks for your answers.

 

23 Replies
Justin Grenier

Good Afternoon, Eric.

You are correct in observing that although cmi.progress_measure is part of the SCORM 2004 Run-Time Reference, cmi.progress_measure is not among the information that Storyline communicates to Learning Management Systems.  To attempt to address your questions individually:

  • Why questions are often among the hardest to answer, since it probably wouldn't be productive for our software architects to be active daily participants in our Discussion Forums.  Having said that, I can hazard a guess that the decision not to send cmi.progress_measure might have something to do with the non-linear potential of Storyline content.
  • Here are the SCORM 2004 Conformance Requirements.  I don't see a requirement that the SCO must implement the cmi.progress_measure data model element, but please feel free to let me know if I've missed something there.
  • Here is an excellent Forum Thread on building a custom progress bar in Storyline.  Once you have the progress information tracked in a variable, here is how you may potentially be able to send that variable to your LMS.
  • Although Articulate doesn't provide support for JavaScript coding, this article will help when you're developing JavaScript triggers in Storyline.  ...and if you're looking for help from the Community, Steve Flowers is an excellent resource on all things JavaScript.

Good luck with your project!

Ricky Nox

Hi Justin,

thanks for this detailled answers.

You are right with SCORM requirements. Unfortunatly :-)

Another solution to meet my needs could be to use the "score". Using a variable to count +1 point for each slide viewed.  So the Score could represent the progress in the course. 

Do you have any example of how to do to count +1 point per slide ? I have looked around the forum but found nothing.

Regards.

 

 

 

 

Justin Grenier

Good Morning, Janet.

Unfortunately, cmi.progress_measure is not among the information that Studio communicates to Learning Management Systems either, although we certainly welcome Feature Requests if this is something important to your organization.

Thanks for the question, and have a great day.

Alyssa Gomez

Hi, Clinton!

Currently Track using course completion in Rise 360 will report either Complete or Incomplete status to the LMS, but not partially complete.

It sounds like you're interested in capturing data that shows the actual percent of the course the learner completed. Can you tell us more about when you would want Rise 360 to send that data and how you would use it? I can share those details with my team as a feature request.

Lauren Connelly

Hi Jeff!

That's an interesting point! 

You can track completion by determining the passing percentage. This tracks the users who score at or above the passing percentage. Here is a glance at the LMS options.

Did you mean reporting the score in it's entirety, whether they pass or fail? Let me know if I'm off-base!

 

Jeff Momsen

To clarify I have added more language mid sentence to my original question:

Shouldn't it be a standard action to send % completion (Mid course, if the learner leaves to come back later. So for example they can stop at 20 % and the LMS can show 20% on their course status. then when they do a few more slides, they can exit the course and see that they have been marked 45% complete, and then 50% etc. so each time they get a little more finished, they can look on their LMS to do list and see how much more of the course they have before they are done) to the LMS? Regardless of the completion criteria?

Ren Gomez

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for clarifying your question. It’s certainly a useful measure in viewing a learner’s path, though, at this point, it’s still not one we’ve implemented. Thanks for letting us know this is important to you.

If having this ability is something that would improve your experience using Articulate, you can submit a feature request here.

André Ørum

i agree with Jeff. This would be benefitial for both users and designers of e-learning modules.

Additionally, it would, as a designer of the courses, be beneficial to know what slides a given percentage is consisting of.  If for instance I find out that most users complete 50% of the course, it would be great to know what 50% of the material was completed and what 50% was not. Without this knowledge it's hard to evaluate and optimize the courses.

Vincent Scoma

Hi Emmanuelle, 

Thank you for reaching out! 

When using Rise 360, you do have the option to select SCORM 2004 as your LMS standard for reporting and tracking. Here is the current options Rise 360 has: 

  • xAPI (Tin Can API)
  • SCORM 2004
  • SCORM 1.2
  • AICC
  • cmi5

I hope this helps and please let us know if you have any questions! 

Cat Wittman

Hi! I recently learned that Rise still doesn't track cmi.progress_measure. However, your staff shared the following article about how to track progress within Storyline using a quiz question (see article). My question is if I have courses built in Rise, can I include a Storyline block that is the aforementioned quiz to then track progress? Looking for a workaround until Rise recognizes such SCORM 2014 4th Ed. parameters. Thanks!

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Cat,

Yes, you can track the completion of your Rise course via Storyline Block and Quiz. The solution that Justin shared above would provide a percentage within the Storyline Block and not your overall Rise course, so I'm not sure if that's completely what you are looking for.

I'd be curious to hear from others in the community that may have implemented a similar setup and any feedback they may have.

Andrea Koehntop

Hello Derek, thank you for your question!

Are you referring to reporting the percentage completed to the LMS? Unfortunately, there is no way to send a progress percentage completed to the LMS- only whether the learner has met the completion requirement or not (complete or incomplete). 

The learner, however, can see progress percentage as they are taking the Rise course. The total number of lessons viewed calculates the completion percentage. For example, if a learner has fully viewed 3 out of 4 lessons (you'll see checkmarks in the menu), the learner would be considered 75% complete.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions. 

Ben Butler

I mostly build scorm packages using html/javascript/css, but have recently been using Articulate Storyline and RISE. I ended up writing some additional javascript to send user progress as the score back to the LMS. I choose to send it as the score, rather than the progress, because I prefer to use the scorm 1.2 learning standard, and cmi.progress_measure is only supported in scorm 2004, and the courses I build evaluate completion as being 100% progress-complete (no quizzes or assessments contributing to score). It took a bit of work to figure out, and there's a bit of a process involved to add this javascript back into the exported scorm package. So, I was wondering Articulate recommends a code snippet market place for this sort of thing.

John Morgan

Hi Ben,

I love that you've started using Storyline and Rise to build your SCORM packages! I hope you are enjoying the software! JavaScript recommendations aren't usually given by our staff, but there are many people in our E-Learning Heroes community that are well-versed in JavaScript. So I will leave you in their hands for any recommendations!

Thanks for reaching out!