Suspend Data Question
Jun 17, 2020
Background: I am trying to get my head around suspend data. I created a course in Storyline and exported to Scorm 1.2. The course does not appear to be that complex or heavy and can take a user around 20 minutes to complete. If I leave on "Resume Saved State" the suspend data is very large. Our LMS has no suspend data limits but the course stopped sending sending data after 30% of the course, so resume always re-started at the slide where the data stopped sending.
I updated the course to "Reset to Initial State" for all slides. The suspend data when I copied and pasted from console into word now appeared to be 21000 characters but this did appear to work, the LMS captured all of the data and resume worked as it should.
Questions:
- Is there a reason why the initial course stopped sending data even though our LMS has not data limits?
- I understand the limit for 1.2 is 4064 characters but I exceeded that and it still worked ok.
If anyone can help me understand this I would be grateful.
Thanks
Paul
6 Replies
Hi Paul, I believe that it maybe that Storyline is truncating the suspend_data string to the maximum of 4096 characters for SCORM 1.2. I don't understand how it could have sent 21000 characters if the Slides were set to reset to initial state. This doesn't make sense as the suspend_data would just be tracking a bookmark (it stores lesson_location in suspend_data) and maybe some other variables and possibly any quiz data if you have a quiz. Are you absolutely sure it was sending through that amount of characters, and it wasn't just 2,100?
Also, as a side note, if the LMS support SCORM 2004 that is always an option to get around suspend_data limits.
Turns out I copied and pasted everything. The suspend data was under 4000 actually. If it goes above 4064 will it stop reporting to the LMS?
Thanks
Yes, I believe it will based on your experience. I'm pretty sure Storyline just truncates at 4096 (not 4064). You can also check on SCORM Cloud and take a look at the logs. You'll see SL will just max out at 4096, and wont attempt to write over 4096 characters. Understand this can be a problem for LMS that have relaxed SCORM 1.2 standards, as you can't take advantage. There will be a way to edit the published output of the SL files, but you don't want to be doing that everytime a course is published.
Thanks Sam
Actually, clarification on that. In terms of reporting things like cmi.interactions, they should continue, but it will not be able to resume saved states of slides beyond a certain point and will always return the user to the last slide it could save. You will still get the cmi.interactions reported to the LMS.
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