Storyline exam does not reset in SumTotal. Need Storyline SumTotal expert.

Patrick, great to meet you...

Short answer: If you use "Never resume" vs "Always resume" does it negatively impact the work you've done to hide the retake quiz button? If not then this is probably the easiest solution. Losing the resume functionality on a 3 question quiz isn't too hateful...

Long answer: Any particular reason the client doesn't want to use Pass/Failed?

Reason I ask is because using Pass/Failed would solve your problem here, and allow the quiz restart to be administered via the LMS, which is really where it should be resolved.

Even if you can force the content to manage retakes/resets for you, it's a bad practice to allow the student to launch a quiz from the LMS only to have the quiz tell them they've ran out of retakes. I did global admin for SumTotal for ~30K users, and our best practice was always to handle this sort of thing from the LMS, not from the content.

The best practice here would be for the student to be told they have reached maxed number of attempts from the LMS, before they've gone as far as launching the quiz.

Via SumTotal, your client can enforce a certain number of attempts (2 in this case). They would have to set the quiz up requiring registration in enforce max retakes.

Once those retakes are maxed, the student emails the LMS admin and the admin simply puts the student in a registered status, allowing them one additional retake.

SumTotal will retain attempt info for every attempt, allowing the LMS admin to report on the students scores from each attempt.

This way your content can just be... content... and the LMS can do all the LMS stuff.

Anyways, sorry for the long reply, but hope this helps.

B

Brian, thanks. This is very helpful.

From Brian, "If you use "Never resume" vs "Always resume" does it negatively impact the work you've done to hide the retake quiz button?"

The Retake Quiz button is not affected by Never resume. Never resume allows you to fail the exam twice in Storyline, locks you out, then you can close and open the exam again and you can fail the exam again twice before being locked out (this cycle repeats and you can always open the exam after closing). The LMS reports the exam Incomplete if you fail. If you pass, then the passing grade is scored and you can’t take the exam again because it is considered Complete. This works well in general, but if users fail twice, the client wants them to be locked out completely (can't open the exam again until reset by LMS) and contact the LMS manager so that person can reset the exam.

From Brian, "Any particular reason the client doesn't want to use Pass/Failed? Reason I ask is because using Pass/Failed would solve your problem here, and allow the quiz restart to be administered via the LMS, which is really where it should be resolved."

We tried Passed/Failed, but that counts the exam as complete in SumTotal even if you fail the exam. Have you seen this behavior in SumTotal? SumTotal then puts the users in Review mode if they try to take it again. Review mode allows them to retake the exam but the new score is never updated (“You have completed the learning activity. Click Review to review the activity. Review mode does not overwrite your previous completion data.”). Let’s assume the users were failing the exam. Users were going into Review mode and getting 100% and taking a screen capture and sending that to their managers even though that 100% was not officially recorded in Review mode. So, SumTotal allows them to retake the exam in Review mode which is not a true lock out and the client wants to avoid that scenario of people sending in screen captures of their score. We changed the setting to Passed/Incomplete and that recognizes that if you fail, SumTotal does not count the exam as complete until you pass which is the desired result.

Even if you can force the content to manage retakes/resets for you, it's a bad practice to allow the student to launch a quiz from the LMS only to have the quiz tell them they've ran out of retakes.

From Brian, "The best practice here would be for the student to be told they have reached maxed number of attempts from the LMS, before they've gone as far as launching the quiz."

Could you clarify what this would look like in Storyline? 

• No retake option within Storyline.
• Passed/Failed or Passed/Incomplete in Storyline? 
• Always Resume or Never Resume in Storyline? It appears SumTotal would then control retakes but not sure of the Resume setting in Storyline.

Thanks.

Hi Patrick, great questions...

Setting your Storyline content for Passed/Failed will set the user's status as Completed (Passed), Completed (Failed), or Incomplete if the user leaves the quiz in the middle without completing it.

This is standard functionality in SumTotal when using Passed/Failed, and is the only way to effectively manage a controlled number of retakes on a quiz. Regardless of passed or failed, SumTotal will recognize the number of completions and enforce the max number of attempts.

Each time the user completes the quiz SumTotal records the results of that attempt, so an admin can see and report on how many attempts and what the results were for each attempt. The most recent attempt is what will be shown on both the activity roster and the user's training transcript in SumTotal.

With the client wanting to control retakes I would recommend the following for Storyline: 

• Turn off retakes in Storyline
• Publish as Passed/Failed
• Always Resume is ok to leave on in this scenario

And I would recommend this on the SumTotal side:

• Require registration for the activity
• Set attempts to 2 maximum
• After 2 attempts the user will be locked out by the LMS, and an admin will have to set their status to "Registered" to give them another attempt.

Brian, that is great, thanks. I will share this with our client. I appreciate your expertise and clear communication.