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
Russell Killips

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.

Wong Interaction Type

You should contact Articulate Support and report this as a bug.

Russell Killips

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";

 

Ren Gomez

Hi Paul,

Thanks for checking in. I'm sorry that you're running into this issue as well, where long-fill-in is not used in Essay type questions in Storyline 360.
 
It is currently in the early stages of review based on our How We Tackle Bugs article. To help you plan, it's unlikely to be fixed in the next couple of updates.
 
Have you tried Russel's workaround to see if that helps?
James Martin

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. 

Nick Shelton

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)

  • Execute the following JavaScript in your course: (on timeline start would work)
    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)

  • Publish your Course (Scorm 2004, v4)
  • In the published output, open "scromdriver.js" from within the "lms" folder. I recommend doing this in a code editor, but you can do it in notepad as well.
  • Find the line:
    var SCORM2004_INTERACTION_TYPE_FILL_IN = "fill-in";
    and change it to:
    var SCORM2004_INTERACTION_TYPE_FILL_IN = "long-fill-in";

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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:

  • Blackboard Learn (James's Example in the thread Above)
  • SCORM Cloud (I tested this)

Essay-type Survey Questions Published in SCORM 2004 v4 DO NOT REPORT answers in:

  • Cornerstone On-Demand (at least our environment)


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:

  • Storyline Problem: Essay Survey Questions are presenting as "fill-in" questions to the LMS, not "long-fill-in".
  • User submits an essay question in course on LMS.
  • Storyline sends "fill-in" interaction type to LMS and question-level data.
  • Some LMS's are programmed to allow more than the standard 256 characters for "fill-in" question types (Blackboard, Scorm Cloud, likely others) so they take in the data and store it anyway.
  • LMS Problem: For LMS's that have more strict SCORM implementations, they see an interaction type of "fill-in" from storyline, but then for example are sent 3,000 characters from the essay question. Because of the "strictness" of the LMS SCORM implementation, and the LMS interpretation the data as a "fill-in" from Storyline, the 3,000 characters don't fit within the 256 character limit and either omits the data or it causes a database error so the data is not stored.

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Hopefully this helps someone :) - Big thanks to Russel for the tip from before!!

- Nick