Options for tracking completion
Dec 02, 2013
My company has recently changed to a new LMS (Saba Cloud), and it allows a bit more information to be visible to the learner than our previous LMS, so we're trying to find the magic solution for tracking course completions.
As I understand it, our only options for publishing courses in Storyline are to 1) track slide views or 2) track by a quiz result.
We tend to shy away from typical quizzes and assessments, as they aren't truly an indicator of learning transfer. (Yes, I acknowledge that some very well designed assessments and simulations are better than the "norm".) Our old LMS required some sort of a score to be returned, so we set up a quiz on the last slide to "click here to receive credit", and the learner never saw the score. Now, in Saba Cloud, they do. We don't want to show a 100% for something that wasn't truly an assessment of knowledge, so generally speaking, quizzes are out.
The alternative for tracking slide views tends to present challenges of its own. Many times, we like to allow branching by role, or more often than not, we try to design courses so the learner is in control and can decide if they want to know more (the "nice to know stuff"), but we don't force the content. In reality, a course could have 100 slides, but the learner could gain sufficient knowledge by reviewing say, 75 of those. When we go with slide views though, if the learner does explore every nook and cranny, they may hit that 75 before getting to more critical content, thus considering the course complete if they exit before reaching the end.
In Captivate, we're able to indicate that if they reach a certain slide, the course is considered complete. This is the ideal setting for us, but more and more, we're trying to keep Storyline as our primary tool.
I'm sure we can't be the only ones in this situation, so I apologize if this has been discussed. (I searched the forums and didn't see anything that was an immediate match.)
Any ideas or workarounds to share?
4 Replies
Hi Kim
James Kingsley wrote this awesome post a while back re using JavaScript to manage scores/completions and what/when to send to your LMS.
https://elearningenhanced.com/blog/2012/09/13/update-storyline-courses-status-lms-javascript
You can now create multiple 'completion points' throughout a course this giving greater scope for learners who don't NEED to go through an assessment or whatever ... Works a treat
Thanks Simon for sharing that link here with Kim. The only other option Kim, if you don't want to track by slides seen or have a standard quiz set up, is to pass completion on a particular slide - although from what you described of your LMS, it will still show a score.
You're welcome. This is a feature that IMO makes a positive leap forward to the way courses can be designed around the more dynamic needs of certain learners. Not necessary in most cases (perhaps) but definitely something that opens up the canvas for better use of exploring (and from an admin's perspective, tracking) various pathways and scenarios.
Thanks, guys!
Simon, we discovered that same post in our research and are curious to see if it's a viable solution. Have you used it?
Ashley, that's the workaround we've been using in our old system, but the score is still a concern since it's more visible now.
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