Totara 2.5 and Storyline 2 - issue with Resume where learner left off

Mar 02, 2015

Hi everyone,

We have recently had some content created on Storyline 2 and use Totara 2.5 as our LMS. Has anyone had any issues or know a solution where the resume where you left off isn't behaving correctly - taking the learner straight to the beginning?

Any information would be appreciated!

Renee

20 Replies
Dan Marsden

in Moodle 2.7 and higher if you go to:

admin > plugins > activities > SCORM

then find the option "scorm12standard" and untick that box it will allow Moodle to store a larger amount of data than the SCORM 1.2 specification allows.

The latest version of Totara (2.6) is based on Moodle 2.6 so as far as I'm aware this version doesn't contain that new setting (although the totara team may have backported it so you should take a look at the settings page to check)

If you have access to your codebase and want to modify it to increase the limits if you find the lines:

CMIString256 = '^[\\u0000-\\uffff]{0,255}$';
CMIString4096 = '^[\\u0000-\\uffff]{0,4096}$';

in this file:
https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/MOODLE_26_STABLE/mod/scorm/datamodels/scorm_12.js.php#L39

And replace the 255 and 4096 numbers at the end of those lines to have a larger number like 64000:

CMIString256 = '^[\\u0000-\\uffff]{0,64000}$';
CMIString4096 = '^[\\u0000-\\uffff]{0,64000}$';

Make sure you take a backup of the old files first in case you break something and after you make any code changes you need to clear the Moodle cache by going to Site Administration > Development > Purge all caches

Good luck!

Renee Tregonning

Hi Guys,

Thank you for this information - we increased the amount of data on Totara (Moodle) as per Dan Marsden's instructions however we have the same outcome. Also we tested the SCORM on SCORM Cloud and it worked fine.

Other more basic Articulate 2 SCORMS don't have the issue.

I have noticed that Forced New Attempt setting to = Yes in Moodle impacts the book marking on larger projects however if this is turned to No it works fine. The only issue is that the learner if they reattempt the course it goes into Review mode?

Any further ideas - I'm also working with our providers as well.

 

 

Renee Tregonning

Ok, we think we have narrowed down the issue to the Exit function in Articulate Storyline 2.

If I use the red x to close the screen (close window completely) the progress gets saved, however, if I use the Exit function in the tool bar another screen appears saying "You have now finished this session you can close this screen". When we close the screen the progress doesn't save.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Renee

Dan Marsden

Do you know what versions of IE you are using? - it could also be a good idea to try and test it with an alternative browser to help isolate that it is restricted to just IE.

If you are using IE 9 - I'd probably try implementing this patch:

https://github.com/moodle/moodle/commit/57f32aa32e46967dd64a44c43a6a8f39a60f7fd7

Which is fixed in Moodle 2.6 (and newer versions of Totara) 

Technical breakdown:
Moodle moved to become XHTML compliant so we stopped using the "iframe" tag to embed content and moved to the XHTML compliant "object" tag - unfortunately IE didn't cope with this very well and the onload/onbeforeunload events weren't triggered correctly when using the "object" tag. The "iframe" tag was re-introduced in the HTML5 spec and Moodle moved towards supporting HTML5 instead of XHTML so we switched back to using the "iframe" tag in Moodle 2.6

That patch will need to be tested properly as it may not apply cleanly to your installation but hopefully it will help.

It may be worth contemplating an upgrade to a newer version of Totara at some point.

Renee Tregonning

Hi Guys,

We have identified that the behavior of the bookmarking is as follows (this might indicate a different resolution so if you know or have heard of this please let me know).

1. Learner opens course and closes using browser X

2. Learner reopens module - resumes where left off and then closes browser window using X

3. Learner reopens module - the module goes back to the beginning of the module (doesn't resume where left off - it also passes a failed score to the LMS)??

If you repeat the above on any page or any number of times - it is the second time you close down it will behave the same way. Surely, there is a setting that might cause this. Both LMS and modules are set to Unlimited attempts.

Anyone with information on this please let me know. 

Thank you so much for your time so far.

Renee

 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Renee, 

I don't know of any specific Totara settings that would impact this, so hopefully Dan or others may be able to chime in to share thoughts on that. 

You may also look at testing the course on a site such as SCORM Cloud to help narrow down if the issue lies within the LMS or the content as well. If you run into the same issue within SCORM Cloud we'll want to take a look at your .story file. 

Dan Marsden

I don't think there will be a user-setting that will help here - I think it's more likely this is a bug that has already been fixed in newer versions of Moodle or a new undiscovered issue.

If this only occurs when using older versions of the IE browser and not Firefox or Chrome I'd expect it may still be related to MDL-36726

It looks like you are a client of our AU office - if you want the team at Catalyst to investigate this further let them know - I work in the NZ office but they can pull me in to support.

Renee Tregonning

Hey Dan,

I just uploaded the SCORM onto the newest version of Totara (2.7) vanilla system plus played it on Google Chrome and I had the same outcome. It doesn't appear to be specific to browser or the version of Totara we are on.

I then uploaded this on SCORM Cloud.

- I completed the steps:

1. Learner opens course and closes using browser X

2. Learner reopens module - resumes where left off and then closes browser window using X

3. Learner reopens module - the module is now laboring for the last 10min.

It appears to me there is a problem with the Articulate published SCORM? I know that Articulate Storyline 2 SCORMs do work on our version of Totara and IE Browser with no issues. 

If anyone has any ideas on what might cause this behavior? We have now provided the Articulate SCORM package to another provider to have a look but any information would be highlighly appreciative.

Thanks

Renee.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Renee,

Just to confirm - everything is working at SCORM Cloud within the different browsers as expected? If so, I'll have to refer you to continue working with your LMS team and as Dan mentioned you may want to reach out to some folks in the AU office for more assistance based on your LMS set up. 

Please feel free to keep us posted here on what else you find out, as I know many users utilize the same LMS. 

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