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?
We have been using Absorb now for about 3-4 months now full time and it is an excellent system. We have around 6500 users on it and we may be looking to increase that in the future if we decide to roll it out to rest of our business.
As I was heavily involved in the initial RFP for a new LMS system I got to see a lot of the competition out there such as Cornerstone, Fuse, etc. Each of them had their own pros and cons but the Absorb system seemed to match our requirements the closest. Although it is lacking some of the advanced social features that we saw in another LMS, it fits exactly what we need in terms of being able to host and deliver content.
One sticking point is the reporting. Even though it does give you some good reports, some of them don't make much sense in how you drill them down, however if you have the API (which we do), you can pull pretty much all the data from the back end anyway (which we aren't yet).
An issue with the reporting I have found though is when you try to pull a questions answer report from a SCORM course (TinCan) it doesnt give you the question text, it just gives you the question type from Storyline (i.e. Pick One, Drag and Drop, etc). A little bit annoying when your trying to analyse your questions.
Overall though its a really good system, really flexible, and we got it implemented in less than a month, when our last LMS took 3 years (we won't name and shame here).
We spoke to another large online retailer before we signed up about their experiences with it and they also said reporting had been an issue. Don't get me wrong though, the reporting is good, and the automated reports is a life saver.
At the moment we only need to pull out enrolment and completion data, along with pass marks, which we can get, but I would like to use the data that SCORM spits out to analyse our courses and see where we can make improvements and also integrate more testing into them. Some of this though is down to lack of support of branching questions in Storyline (multiple results slides to report from), which there is a work around but its difficult.
So I was hoping to add something material to the discussion, but David and Ant summed it up perfectly with exactly the same comments we have....
Great system. Stable, Easy to Use. Easy to Administer. But the reporting is a little rudimentary and trying to pull an "all completions" type report to slice and dice externally is nearly impossible.
That being said, the reporting is limited by design so it's fast fast fast compared to many LMSs. And Absorb will custom create those types of additional reports you need and automate them for you.
All in all... quite pleased and would definitely recommend to others.
As described, I'm not sure this is a problem per se. The quiz can't be "passed or failed" until it's complete. That's not an Absorb thing, that's a courseware thing. On Absorb's support site they list the preferred publishing settings for Articulate courseware. We've had no issues when following them.
That being said..... It may be worth mentioning that Absorb does not support the mastery_score SCORM setting. So if you are expecting the LMS to track scores and set pass/fail based on that, then you will want to use their quizzing tool instead. Otherwise the courseware aggregates the score and passes the p/f variable and score to the LMS for recording. Hope that makes sense.
I have to admit I haven't used Absorb since the latest release came out - there seems to be some sexy new reporting dashboard which on the surface looks great, but I'm not sure how much better it actually is - have any of you tried this?
We use the Billboards, Polls and News Articles in the Mercury module and they work really well. They are quite flexible in terms of the audience you can aim them at which is handy for us as we have 2 different branded portals so we need to control who sees what.
We haven't found a use for the Contests yet but it looks pretty good in that you can enter people into contests for completing courses, etc.
One thing I do like about the Billboards is the ability to put videos instead of pictures in. We haven't used this yet but it does open possibilities.
Hi, Absorb users. We are sandboxing Absorb and I have a quiz I've imported (made in Storyline 360). The quiz itself plays fine, and through reporting I can see that the course passed and percentage scored correctly, but can't get to a report that shows me which questions they got wrong and see the finer details. Can you please tell me how this is achievable? Am I uploading incorrectly? Do I have to do something in Storyline or in Absorb to get this to show up in reporting? Thanks.
36 Replies
We have been using Absorb now for about 3-4 months now full time and it is an excellent system. We have around 6500 users on it and we may be looking to increase that in the future if we decide to roll it out to rest of our business.
As I was heavily involved in the initial RFP for a new LMS system I got to see a lot of the competition out there such as Cornerstone, Fuse, etc. Each of them had their own pros and cons but the Absorb system seemed to match our requirements the closest. Although it is lacking some of the advanced social features that we saw in another LMS, it fits exactly what we need in terms of being able to host and deliver content.
One sticking point is the reporting. Even though it does give you some good reports, some of them don't make much sense in how you drill them down, however if you have the API (which we do), you can pull pretty much all the data from the back end anyway (which we aren't yet).
An issue with the reporting I have found though is when you try to pull a questions answer report from a SCORM course (TinCan) it doesnt give you the question text, it just gives you the question type from Storyline (i.e. Pick One, Drag and Drop, etc). A little bit annoying when your trying to analyse your questions.
Overall though its a really good system, really flexible, and we got it implemented in less than a month, when our last LMS took 3 years (we won't name and shame here).
Hi David - interesting to hear your reports on Absorb, I used it extensively in my last full time role and also found it to be a great system.
My biggest gripe was also reporting - would be interested to hear how you plan to use the data?
We spoke to another large online retailer before we signed up about their experiences with it and they also said reporting had been an issue. Don't get me wrong though, the reporting is good, and the automated reports is a life saver.
At the moment we only need to pull out enrolment and completion data, along with pass marks, which we can get, but I would like to use the data that SCORM spits out to analyse our courses and see where we can make improvements and also integrate more testing into them. Some of this though is down to lack of support of branching questions in Storyline (multiple results slides to report from), which there is a work around but its difficult.
So I was hoping to add something material to the discussion, but David and Ant summed it up perfectly with exactly the same comments we have....
Great system. Stable, Easy to Use. Easy to Administer. But the reporting is a little rudimentary and trying to pull an "all completions" type report to slice and dice externally is nearly impossible.
That being said, the reporting is limited by design so it's fast fast fast compared to many LMSs. And Absorb will custom create those types of additional reports you need and automate them for you.
All in all... quite pleased and would definitely recommend to others.
Hi Ana,
As described, I'm not sure this is a problem per se. The quiz can't be "passed or failed" until it's complete. That's not an Absorb thing, that's a courseware thing. On Absorb's support site they list the preferred publishing settings for Articulate courseware. We've had no issues when following them.
That being said..... It may be worth mentioning that Absorb does not support the mastery_score SCORM setting. So if you are expecting the LMS to track scores and set pass/fail based on that, then you will want to use their quizzing tool instead. Otherwise the courseware aggregates the score and passes the p/f variable and score to the LMS for recording. Hope that makes sense.
Hello Bob,
Thanks for helping i have run several different test and i think now it's working as we want.
Thanks!
I have to admit I haven't used Absorb since the latest release came out - there seems to be some sexy new reporting dashboard which on the surface looks great, but I'm not sure how much better it actually is - have any of you tried this?
Is that the Mercury 5 module you are referring to? Yes, looks exciting.... No haven't implemented it yet.
Anyone have hands-on experience with it?
We use the Billboards, Polls and News Articles in the Mercury module and they work really well. They are quite flexible in terms of the audience you can aim them at which is handy for us as we have 2 different branded portals so we need to control who sees what.
We haven't found a use for the Contests yet but it looks pretty good in that you can enter people into contests for completing courses, etc.
One thing I do like about the Billboards is the ability to put videos instead of pictures in. We haven't used this yet but it does open possibilities.
My company is just getting started with Absorb...any Absorb users still out there? Has the reporting improved in the past 2 years???
Any tips/tricks for uploading Rise courses to the LMS?
Hi, Absorb users. We are sandboxing Absorb and I have a quiz I've imported (made in Storyline 360). The quiz itself plays fine, and through reporting I can see that the course passed and percentage scored correctly, but can't get to a report that shows me which questions they got wrong and see the finer details. Can you please tell me how this is achievable? Am I uploading incorrectly? Do I have to do something in Storyline or in Absorb to get this to show up in reporting? Thanks.
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