Hello. I have two courses published on Cornerstone, that give us trouble.
For some users the training does not change to Completed after they completed the training. The courses are quite large and include videos that link out to MS Stream. At first, we thought users "x" out of the course too quickly and don't use the EXIT button but that doesn't seem to be the problem.
I have taken the course in the LMS myself and it worked fine. It also always works for me, if I log in as someone else and complete the training in their name.
I have tested it in SCORM Cloud as well and it works fine.
Enabling debug mode in the file to see all the communication between your content and the LMS will show all the data Storyline is sending. That way, your LMS team can pin down the cause more easily. Here's how to Enable LMS Debug Mode in Storyline.
We experience this issue a lot using Oracle/APEX. About 90% of our staff will complete a course without issues, but the remaining ones are stuck "in-progress" even after completing. It does seem to happen more often with longer classes.
We have come to believe that at some point the connection between the user work station and the LMS server becomes disconnected. The user can complete the class, but because the communication has been broken, the LMS doesn't register the completion trigger. I wish there was an easy way to fix this, but what we have been doing is signing in as the user, seeing where they left off in the course, and if they are at the end, manually marking them completed. We also ask staff to stay active in the course by clicking/ actively interacting and not walking away or letting the course sit while it's running. We hope this help keeps the connection to the LMS. Bad wireless for the user may also contribute. Hope that helps and I'm looking forward to other responses to see how people are dealing with this.
Hi Katie Thanks for your reply. Cornerstone says, since the status does switch over to completed for some users it doesn’t have anything to do with their platform but with Articulate….. So, looks like we will be going in circles here…. ☹
Thank you for chiming in and sharing your experience as well.
Storyline 360 will send a keep-alive message to the LMS every 10 minutes by default, and this keep-alive message includes Suspend Data that will help the LMS recover from a learner's session that suspended for any reason. A great way to verify that this keep-alive message is happening is to enable LMS Debug Mode so that you can watch the communication flowing across the wire.
Thanks for the update. It is especially difficult to pin down when the issue cannot be replicated.
Were you able to pin down any specific environment for these affected users?
Do the affected users get a completion with your SCORM Cloud course as well?
It looks like your email signature came through when you replied via email. You can remove that if needed by clicking ‘Edit’ beneath your response. Here’s a quick Peek video if you need help.
We are a government organization and we have tens of thousands of online enrollments per year. Most of our course designers are using Storyline 3. Not sure if it has the same keep-alive feature as 360? We consistently see a rate of failure in our class completion reporting of about 5-10%. When it is reported to us by a user that they've completed the course but didn't receive completion, we verify by acting as a proxy and seeing where the user left off. It usually brings us to the final screen, or to the quiz results screen which verifies that the user did complete the course. If 95% receive completion and 5% don't, we assume the published Storyline files aren't the issue. The only logical explanation is a communication disruption between the user station and the LMS server. This would also explain why users sometimes leave a course, and when they return, they are brought back slides earlier than where they left. The bookmarking feature wasn't working as planned.
As you stated in your reply to Anika, these non-completions are very hard to replicate. We have had two new staff in the same computer lab complete a course at the same time and one won't receive completion while the other will.
If anyone has any other answers or help with this, it would save us a ton of work cleaning up course completions. We've just accepted it as the way things are over the last ten years.
Hi. I had a list of questions that I asked the users who had this issue. All of them came back with an answer that points into the direction that the issue lies indeed between the station and the LMS.
I hope, that this is the issue because we can then ask our users to log in to the LMS outside the "private" environment that a lot of users still work in.
Regarding the resume button: Users claimed they reached the last page, so you would expect to see that page when you click resume. In our case, this never happened. Most of the time, the page that was shown was a page that linked to a movie in MS Streams.
7 Replies
Hi Anika,
Because the course works correctly in SCORM Cloud, it sounds like you're looking for guidance from fellow Cornerstone users.
I look forward to learning what others advise and will try to help with a few ideas for now:
We experience this issue a lot using Oracle/APEX. About 90% of our staff will complete a course without issues, but the remaining ones are stuck "in-progress" even after completing. It does seem to happen more often with longer classes.
We have come to believe that at some point the connection between the user work station and the LMS server becomes disconnected. The user can complete the class, but because the communication has been broken, the LMS doesn't register the completion trigger. I wish there was an easy way to fix this, but what we have been doing is signing in as the user, seeing where they left off in the course, and if they are at the end, manually marking them completed. We also ask staff to stay active in the course by clicking/ actively interacting and not walking away or letting the course sit while it's running. We hope this help keeps the connection to the LMS. Bad wireless for the user may also contribute. Hope that helps and I'm looking forward to other responses to see how people are dealing with this.
Hi Katie
Thanks for your reply.
Cornerstone says, since the status does switch over to completed for some users it doesn’t have anything to do with their platform but with Articulate…..
So, looks like we will be going in circles here…. ☹
Hi Michael,
Thank you for chiming in and sharing your experience as well.
Storyline 360 will send a keep-alive message to the LMS every 10 minutes by default, and this keep-alive message includes Suspend Data that will help the LMS recover from a learner's session that suspended for any reason. A great way to verify that this keep-alive message is happening is to enable LMS Debug Mode so that you can watch the communication flowing across the wire.
LMS Debug Mode
Storyline does not set a timeout limit. The LMS would control any timeouts.
Are you able to narrow down any specific environment for these affected users?
HI Anika,
Thanks for the update. It is especially difficult to pin down when the issue cannot be replicated.
It looks like your email signature came through when you replied via email. You can remove that if needed by clicking ‘Edit’ beneath your response. Here’s a quick Peek video if you need help.
We are a government organization and we have tens of thousands of online enrollments per year. Most of our course designers are using Storyline 3. Not sure if it has the same keep-alive feature as 360? We consistently see a rate of failure in our class completion reporting of about 5-10%. When it is reported to us by a user that they've completed the course but didn't receive completion, we verify by acting as a proxy and seeing where the user left off. It usually brings us to the final screen, or to the quiz results screen which verifies that the user did complete the course. If 95% receive completion and 5% don't, we assume the published Storyline files aren't the issue. The only logical explanation is a communication disruption between the user station and the LMS server. This would also explain why users sometimes leave a course, and when they return, they are brought back slides earlier than where they left. The bookmarking feature wasn't working as planned.
As you stated in your reply to Anika, these non-completions are very hard to replicate. We have had two new staff in the same computer lab complete a course at the same time and one won't receive completion while the other will.
If anyone has any other answers or help with this, it would save us a ton of work cleaning up course completions. We've just accepted it as the way things are over the last ten years.
Hi. I had a list of questions that I asked the users who had this issue. All of them came back with an answer that points into the direction that the issue lies indeed between the station and the LMS.
I hope, that this is the issue because we can then ask our users to log in to the LMS outside the "private" environment that a lot of users still work in.
Regarding the resume button: Users claimed they reached the last page, so you would expect to see that page when you click resume. In our case, this never happened. Most of the time, the page that was shown was a page that linked to a movie in MS Streams.
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