Single SCORM File Size and MultiSCO
Apr 28, 2015
Hi All
I have been developing elearning for many years, but I am new to Storyline. We have recently asked a supplier to develop a range of courses for us in Storyline. The supplier is claiming they will need to either limit the size of a course to 50 - 60 slides (40 - 50 MB) if publishing as a single SCORM package otherwise the course is likely to crash on tablets. They say if we want bigger courses it must be a MutliSCO.
This sounds bizarre to me, I have published single SCORM files with several hundred pages and package size 250MB+ many times before in other authoring tools without issue.
Has anyone heard of large SCORM packages having issues with causing tablets to? If so, is it specific to Storyline? I cant think of single reason why this may be the case, nor find any other reports of this on the web.
Grateful for any advise.
Andy
8 Replies
During my research, I have just found this article:
http://www.electronmedia.in/wp/adobe_captivate7_vs_articulate_storyline_vs_lectora_inspire/2/
which suggests Storyline tries to preload all assets which could cause the browser to crash in large courses. Is this still true in Storyline 2? And if so, is there any way to prevent this?
Thanks
Andy
Hi Andy
just found this previous post not sure if it helps you
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/any-way-to-speedup-the-initial-preloading-of-assets
I have a current project with a .story file weighing in at 1.3 GB and a published SCORM package at ~350 MB. Functions and behaves on the LMS just fine as well as on tablets.
It is important, however, to be aware of how Storyline preloads when developing larger projects. Meaning, if you have a lot of video or other media rich slides, plan to have less-weighted static slides just prior to those media slides to aide in the preloading.
Hi Kevin, Wendy
Thanks for your feedback. The courses being developed do not contain any video, just text and graphics. I have yet to see the first course as a .story file to see how their image optimisation is, but now I at least have a better understanding of how storyline loads in assets. Its good to know you can comfortably have a 100MB file - and I cant see how a text and graphic only course could be more than 100MB!
Thanks
Andy
Project files can get pretty big really fast if one is not conscious of their project's asset management. For example, if you were to take a lot of scene photos for backgrounds with a typical smartphone camera, those images are on average 2 MB in size. Even reducing them to thumbnail size still retain their original size. Several of those on one slide could easily take one slide up over 20 MB - similar slides with uncompressed images could easily raise a project file to big numbers.
Just be conscious of media assets when developing. If you're unsure, test and test often!
Question--is this SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004?
If SCORM 1.2, there is also a possibility of bookmarking issues. Not usually so with SCORM 2004.
It will be SCORM 1.2. Can you give a wee bit more info on the bookingmarking issue? Does the issue lie with MultiSCO?
Large Storyline courses published to SCORM 1.2 MAY experience bookmarking issues if the LMS is strictly following the SCORM 1.2 standard for bookmarking data (4096 characters limit).
Once the limit has been exceeded as a learner re-launches a course, bookmarking may work by returning to the slide before the limit was exceeded and not to where the learner actually left off.
This thread discusses this: https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/scorm-1-2-suspend-data-seems-wonky-to-my-pea-brain
Depending how the course is structured, number of layers (and layers on masters), the activities, resume settings for slides, and the number of quizzes and questions, Storyline may generate a lot of resume data. It keeps track of a lot of things.
Options that may help:
1. Some LMS's (like Moodle 2.7, I believe ) have a configuration override. With that, the 4096 character limit can be ignored for SCORM 1.2.
2. Of, if the LMS supports SCORM 2004 3rd of 4th Edition, publish the Storyline course to that standard (resume data can then be up to 64,000 characters).
3. Use multi-SCO's as you suggest and break your course into very small chunks. Each SCORM 1.2 SCO should act like a separate course with each own resume data limit.
(If you need a tool to package up your multi-SCO course, I recommend Simple SCORM Packager.)
Of course, the LMS has to support multi-SCO's--some may not. Or the interface for it may confuse the learners.
The downside with multi-SCO's is all the SCO's have to work perfectly with the LMS for the completion to get recorded. So, say, a learner views all the SCO's, but, for one SCO, the network "hiccuped" at course exit and the completion data did not get through, the learner usually does not get credit for completing the course. They will need to complete that unit again successfully for things to work.
4. Tin Can (instead of SCORM) may be an option if the LMS supports it. Not sure, however, of the Tin Can bookmarking resume data limit.
Help?
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