Absorb LMS - Blatant Media - any users out there?

Sep 06, 2012

Hi guys - I thought it might be useful (for me especially!) to start a thread for users of this LMS. We have just implemented this in our company, and as a beginner, would welcome feedback, hints and tips from any other absorb users out there.. have had a steep learning curve and feel that there are still many twists and turns in the road ahead..

Also, if any of you are based in the UK like me, maybe we could organise meetups to discuss tactics?

Looking forward to sharing experiences... 

36 Replies
Dale Reesor

Hi Absorb users.

We are working on exploration of this LMS to use in our organization. I have a "sandbox" installation at this point, and so was working with SCORM course trials: uploading, completing quizzes in Absorb. All is working well (once I chose the correct SCORM version in Articulate and in the LMS).

My question: I have a labelled graphic as part of a course and it will not display in the LMS, it just hangs. Everything else works fine but not the labelled graphic.

Suggestions?

Dale Reesor

Bryan Harrigan said:

Hi Dale,

I'm a course authoring enthusiast with Absorb and I was wondering if the problem with your labeled graphic occurs in all browsers? Does the course display the graphic at all or is it just the interactions that fail to load?


Hey Bryan

I have not checked other browsers, and nothing loads...but here is what I have discovered today.

I sat down this afternoon with my Absorb LMS and chipped away at things and I have discovered a solution that seems to work every time. First, Absorb seems to like a few of the interactions, but eventually they just don't get along with Absorb. Through a process of elimination, I started to wonder if it was the animations in the Articulate interaction, but then I stumbled upon a solution.

I did render the Articulate interaction as a SCORM file:

  • imported the SCORM course,
  • then went to the individual course I was creating in Absorb and  browsed to the "player.html" file from my uploaded library of assets.

Sadly, eventually I repeated the problem of the interaction not working. Even if I serve a SCORM course (not a self-made course) many of the articulate interactions will not work. The page loads and then it hangs for as long as I leave it trying to load.

Solution

I have an Amazon 3s account, and I uploaded an entire folder for a course into Amazon. Then I pulled the URL to the "player.html" into the online course as a "lesson" and all is well. No matter which interaction or how many interactions I include, they all work well. Not sure if this is a solution or a "work around," but until I learn something else, or someone has another solution, this seems to work.

Item Next:

Anyone have success using a Youtube video in Absorb LMS?

Mike Eggermont

Hi - in 2 weeks we will support adding a YouTube Embed URL as an Object type lesson. We will mark completion when the video starts because there is no SCORM type call that tells us the end of the video - but still pretty great for using outside content. The email with release notes should be going out in about a week - or look on http://support.absorblms.com late next week. 

Ted Heyworth

Hi All,

We've been Absorb users (and fans) for about 2-3 years now... Thought I'd jump in on the conversation as I inherited Adobe Captivate as the authoring tool of choice, but am starting to explore Articulate Storyline as an option. I'm certainly not a developer and struggle to get captivate to produce a SCORM file that gives me what I want in Absorb, where a basic test with Storyline seemed easier and produced the LMS reporting I was looking for.

Any thoughts on SCORM integration/ease of use with Absorb between the two programs? Is there an Aggregator program for Storyline to produce a Multi-Sco project or is it better to load individual SCORM courses and package in Absorb with Curricula functionality?Any publishing best practices for Absorb? (File size, output files etc.)

Thanks,

Ted

Craig Basford

Hi Ted. I can't provide much from the perspective of course design  but I did want to let you know about our published course authoring guidelines here: https://absorb.zendesk.com/entries/23031762-Course-Authoring-Guide 

There is a section covering Storyline and includes basic recommendations for reporting and tracking, as well as setting up the player to scale properly for HTML 5 content.

Hope this helps,

Craig

Laura Winkelspecht

Hey Ted, we've been with Absorb about 2.5 years now. I don't have a lot of Captivate courses in the system and they are all old (created in 5.0), but what I have that was created in Captivate 5.0 doesn't work at all with the new user interface in Absorb. I thought I'd mention that in case if you were still on older versions of either.  

Andrew Moss

Dale Reesor said:

Solution

I have an Amazon 3s account, and I uploaded an entire folder for a course into Amazon. Then I pulled the URL to the "player.html" into the online course as a "lesson" and all is well. No matter which interaction or how many interactions I include, they all work well. Not sure if this is a solution or a "work around," but until I learn something else, or someone has another solution, this seems to work.


Hi Dale ... curious - I would imagine any scorm reporting the course had in it would not work with this solution?

Very hard to tell where the issues lie in non-functioning features in our courses....  software, LMS, browser, platform, device....  it's quite the puzzle. 

Have you made any further progress on a reliable solution?

Matt Darga

Hello ABSORB users,

I am trying to get my video to work with Vimeo (embedded video that is not Youtube). Here is my case.

My company is implementing an LMS to train our technicians (a majority of our employees) on how to repair new devices (a new one every 4 months) using gigabytes on gigabytes of videos. We film all the repairs inhouse and upload to Vimeo Pro. My job is to take it from Vimeo and put it in the LMS. Currently I am trying to use Storyline 2 but I can't get the video to work after I upload to the LMS (Absorb)

I upload the file via a zipped file and then unzip and use the index_lms_html5.html. Everything else works but the video, even though it worked in preview mode. 

I have tried using a web object, which is great because then the video actually runs. The problem is I can't put any triggers on the web object. I want the Techs to watch the video before advancing to the next slide (Which happens to be a quiz that will kick them back to the video if they do not get it right).

So what I need is either:

A) Show me how to get the blasted video to work via the normal "video from website" option. or

B) Show me how to get a web object to allow triggers so that they have to at least click on the video before they can go to the next slide (preferably watch the entire video).

Facts: Video is on Vimeo.com, I'm using Articulate Storyline 2, and I am putting it into Absorb LMS. Does not work in SCORM Cloud either.

Thank you!

Laurel Malialis

Hi Folks! I'm also using Absorb LMS and Articulate Storyline 2.

I was wondering if anyone has found a work around for putting external links into an elearning course in Absorb? I find that my links get their URL changed when opened in Absorb. So say for example the link is http://www.google.ca when the course is imported into Absorb it changes to mysite.absorb.ca/http://www.google.ca - which gives a 404 error.

Laurel Malialis

I'll try to explain it as best I can!

In Articulate, I've created just a simple hyperlink on some text. The link is to a government website. When I preview on my computer it works fine.

Then I publish the course from Articulate and import it into Absorb. When viewing the course as a student, if I click the link it is not the link I created, it's added the absorb URL to the start of the hyperlink somehow. So it's mysite.absorb.ca/http://www.governmentsite.com

 

Ant Pugh

Ok, thanks for explaining it so clearly!

I understand what you are saying, but I don't understand why it is doing that - I added several links to my courses in Storyline and then uploaded courses to Absorb, and that never happened to me.

I know this isn't particularly helpful, but I guess it does mean that what you are experiencing isn't normal... Have you spoken with Absorb directly? It maybe a setting on your LMS that is trying to redirect them to an Absorb link - but I have no idea why...

Interested to hear how you get on.

Ana  Mira

Hello guys!

I'm really happy that this thread exists.

My team is starting to use ABSORB LMS and we are running some tests regarding quiz (without % score) withing the course developed with SL2.

The problem is that even with all the correct configurations in SL, the LMS does not report correctly the progress of the course. i.e.: when the learner does not complete the quiz, the LMS reports  "in progress" instead of " failure".

 

Did anyone of you guys had the same problem?

 

Thanks!

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