Variable Storage and LMS Timeout

Jul 10, 2015

One of my users has run into a problem with a module that was recently launched. This is about a 2 hour long module with fairly extensive branching and over a hundred variables.

I'm posting the slide in question: it prompts the user to choose 2 out of 5 candidates for interviews. When a second candidate is selected, the remaining 3 should dim and become disabled buttons.

Right now, the student has selected two candidates (Finalist 01 and Finalist 04), but the remaining 3 are not dimmed. As a result, the entire module is frozen. My guess is that the variable tracking how many candidates are selected (finNumSelected) has not incremented or de-incremented correctly. Unfortunately, I have not been able to duplicate the problem.

I'm not 100% certain where or how variables are stored. Could this problem be the result of the user timing out of the LMS while the module is still running? Could it be affected by bookmarking? Am looking down the wrong path?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

3 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Julia,

Thanks for sharing the slide here. It seems to be working on that slide alone? When/how are you seeing it that the buttons don't change their state? I'm not sure what you mean about how the variables are saved - but they're included as you progress through the course and saved as a part of the cookies or similar for if you close and have enabled the prompt to resume. 

You mentioned you couldn't duplicate it yourself either, testing the entire course or just this slide? 

Julia Koller

Hi Ashley,

Thank you for taking a look.

Yes, the problem is only on this slide. 

I'm attaching a screenshot from the user, that shows the problem. You can see that two finalists are selected, and the alert is showing. Also, the unselected finalists are not disabled.

In both cases, the alert and disabled finalists would be triggered by a counter that tracks how many finalists are selected. I've checked the triggers multiple times, and I cannot see an error in the "code" that would cause the problem.

What would be helpful for me, is if I could go into my user's account and figure out what the counter is at. So, for the screen attached, is the counter at 0, 1, -1, etc...? Even better, would be the ability to manually edit the counter in the LMS so he can resume the course without restarting it.

Our Player is set to "Prompt to Resume" and "When running in LMS, Ignore Flash Cookie". 

I still cannot duplicate the problem in any testing environment, including the live one. Another thought I've had is that the user might have timed out of the LMS while taking the course, and as a result, the variables did not get written back to the server. Would this be a possibility?

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