Updating published SL360 courses on LMS
Jun 21, 2021
Hi all,
What do you guys do when you need to update a course, which is hosted on an LMS, and which has active users?
Our courses often require updates. Some small, and I simply replace the existing course. Some large, in which new slides are added, slides get deleted, sometimes we even make changes in the tracked final quiz. These larger updates tend to mess up the courses for existing users. Resulting in stuck users, for which we have to reset the course (delete their results). If users already passe the course, it often results in them not being able to open the updated course any more. Storyline shows an empty screen and the course (or even the browser) gets completely stuck.
How to prevent this?
Our current workflow is less than perfect. For larger updates, we publish a Version 2.0 and tell users to stop using the old one and use the new version. After 1-2 months, we delete the old version and only keep the new version. But this often leads to confusion, lost certificates/results and incomplete reports.
3 Replies
No one?
Hi, Sara,
This seems like one of those questions for which the answer is "it depends."
You've got to consider the functionality of the LMS, the number of users potentially impacted, etc.
One of my clients would do something similar to what you're doing: communicate to any "in progress" users that they had a limited amount of time to complete the course or they would have to start over. If they didn't finish, well, too bad. The new version went into Production, and anyone who hadn't completed the earlier version had to start over.
Thank you Judy. Good to know that I am not alone in this.
Our LMS provides a choice; 'update/overwrite the existing course' or 'upload new course'. I found that when the course is seriously altered (i.e. new or shuffled slides) it is best not to overwrite the course. In progress users could experience problems. In this particular case, about 1000 'in progress' users would be affected.