SCORM 2004 long-fill in type Essay question
Oct 04, 2019
I am using Storyline 360 to create evaluations. We moved to a new LMS vendor and I am now loosing user responses for essay interactions. The system is reporting NULL. After working with support for some time they have told me that the course is submitting essay questions as type fill-in which has a 250 character limit. It needs to be submitting them as type long-fill in. When I check my interaction data in the system that is correct. The type is fill-in. Where in the Storyline tool can change this so that essay questions are submitting type long-fill-in rather than fill-in?
15 Replies
Are you just using the survey feature? If so, the short answer fill in has a 256 character limit, the essay answer can go up to 5,000 characters.
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Yes I am using the survey feature. I need 5000 characters. Our learners are asked to elaborate on their learning outcomes and sometimes their responses exceed 250 characters.
Hi Jabrea,
I made a sample course and the same problem is happening to me.
I created an Essay slide and published the course for SCORM 2004 4th Edition. I uploaded the course to the SCORM cloud, completed the course and viewed the Log.
Storyline is reporting the incorrect interaction type. It is being reported as: "fill-in".
It should be reported as: "long-fill-in".
Here is a screen shot from part of the log file.
You should contact Articulate Support and report this as a bug.
I came up with a temporary work-around. I hope it works for you.
After publishing your course, replace the SCORM2004Functions.js file with the attached one. The file is located inside the lms folder.
I changed it so that all "fill-in" interactions will be reported as "long-fill-in".
At around line 41, I changed it to:
var SCORM2004_INTERACTION_TYPE_FILL_IN = "long-fill-in";
All of our trainings have an evaluation element and they all have essay questions. I make a lot of them. Will this work for any course? Also I just need to replace the file with the one you attached and that's it?
It should work for any course published as SCORM 2004.
Yes, just replace the file.
You should make a sample course as a test.
I made a sample course and tested it in the SCORM Cloud. Looking at the logs, all fill-in interactions are being reported as long-fill-in.
Tested a few courses and this is working. Thank you so much!!
I'm glad this works for you. I have narrowed down the problem to a specific function within the SCORM2004Functions.js file.
I have submitted a case: 01996191 to Articulate Support with a possible solution.
Thanks for opening a support case to work directly with our support engineers on this, Russell.
Hi - I've run into this same problem, is there any news on a timeframe for a resoultion?
Hi Paul,
Hello - any progress on this?
Thank you for following up, Adam!
This is an issue that our team is continuing to investigate! Now that you're subscribed to this thread, you'll get notified of any movement.
In the meantime, I'm curious if this suggestion might help you—I'd recommend testing this method in SCORM Cloud first!
This seems to be fixed. I've tested a Storyline 360 quiz exported to SCORM 2004 with a survey/essay question, and it exceed 255 characters by a long shot. I'm attaching some files so you can test it yourself. The text in the essay is copy pasted from a web site. I put "EOF" (End Of File) at the end to see if it cut off. The entry was 2552 characters. The screenshots are from Blackboard Learn.
Howdy,
This can still be an issue in your LMS, depending on how your LMS behaves.
Good news, Russell's workaround (with a few updates based on how Storyline publishes now) still works.
Screenshots of solutions attached.
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The Fix - Easy Version: (Doesn't require changing code after each publish)
SCORM2004_INTERACTION_TYPE_FILL_IN = "long-fill-in"
This trigger needs to fire before any essays are submitted...and MUST fire each time your course is opened. I just put the trigger on the slide master, so it runs on every slide. This way it'll run even if the course is closed and resumed later.
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The Fix - Manual Version: (as of January 2023)
and change it to:
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ARTICULATE SHOULD RESOLVE THIS ISSUE.
Perhaps most LMS's have updated to allow more than 256 characters when receiving "fill-in" interaction types, but it's still a problem that will cause reporting issues on some LMS's. Right now you'd have to test on your system and then apply the fix if it's not working. Even then, the fix might not work on your LMS.
A Deeper Dive into the problem can be found below.
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Essay-type Survey Questions Published in SCORM 2004 v4 seem to SUCCESSFULLY REPORT answers in:
Essay-type Survey Questions Published in SCORM 2004 v4 DO NOT REPORT answers in:
NOTE: In my test in cornerstone, only 3,992 characters were recorded in the essay (4,900 were summitted). This is likely due to how the SCORM data is sent. The main takeaway is that if you need this workaround, it's highly likely that the limit is closer to 4,000 characters than the stated 5,000.
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Analysis & Assumption:
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Hopefully this helps someone :) - Big thanks to Russel for the tip from before!!
- Nick