Why is course progress lost on mobile devices?
Mar 18, 2014
When progressing through a course on an iPad, I will often complete a section and return to the LMS but not receive a completion status (based on # of slides viewed). It is erratic (if I complete the section again, it might update).
I understand that losing the Internet connection would prevent the device from sending the results to the LMS. My question is, how often is this information transferred? Every slide? When the user exits the course? If I re-start the section, it often requires me to start from the beginning rather than prompting me to pick up where I left off (near or at the end).
Do different LMSs handle the communication of this data differently? Is there a way to make sure the course passes tracking of what slide the user is on regularly so they don't need to start over from the beginning if they get disconnected?
5 Replies
My LMS prompted me to use Developer Tools in Google Chrome to track logging of Scorm [scormNS.doLog(true)]. Each time I press the "Next" button, it logs the following:
SCO called SetValue("cmi.suspend_data",....
Is this tracking each page that has been viewed? If this is being transmitted, I'm wondering why when the course locks-up or crashes I'm often started over at the beginning of the SCO without being prompted to resume where I left off, or if I am prompted to resume where I left off, it's near the beginning of the SCO (instead of the actual last page I had viewed).
So apparently the data is "persisted to the database" whenever "Commit" is logged. I progressed through 8 or 9 slides before this appeared in the log. Is there a way to force this "Commit" communication to happen more frequently? What triggers this?
Hi David,
Storyline communicates course completion to an LMS (LMSCommit) when the user meets the completion requirement, either when they reach the appropriate result slide or when they have viewed the required number of slides, but communication is continually going back and forth between the course and your LMS.
A similar (but older) thread here discusses how to send the data per every slide, but it shouldn't be necessary to do so.
It also sounds like you're seeing the prompt to resume earlier in the course but not when you reach closer to the end? It may be that you're exceeding the SCORM Data limits as described here. Have you published for SCORM 1.2?
I'm publishing for SCORM 2004, version 4. The SCOs are only 15-25 slides long, so it should not be a SCORM Data limit issue. I can finish an entire SCO, exit, and not receive a completion. When I re-open the SCO, I'm often restarted at the beginning with no prompt to resume whatsoever. Sometimes it will prompt to resume, but then takes me back much earlier in the course.
The thread you provided suggest using js to call the Commit function on every slide. Other threads I've read say that some js is not supported in HTML5. Do you know if this function will work when published to HTML5? That's key, because it's the iPad access that experiences the lack of completion tracking.
Hi David,
Are you letting your LMS handle the prompt to resume or Storyline? Also I know your originally mentioned the iPad in this thread - is that the only place where the behavior is occurring or is it occurring on your desktop as well?
For the times it takes you back earlier in the course, is it bringing you back to where you met the completion requirement or somewhere random? Since it seems to have somewhat inconsistent behavior, have you tried loading the course at SCORM Cloud to see if the behavior is specific to your LMS or the Storyline course itself?
JavaScript triggers are supported in the Flash and HTML5 published formats. However, JavaScript is not supported in the Articulate Mobile Player for iPad. I'm not well enough versed in Javascript to know how it will behave, but you may want to reach out to a few of the users in that thread to see how they experienced it within an iPad.
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