Help Me if You Can: Characters pixilated and learners kicked out during testing on LMS

Dec 14, 2017

Anthony Harmetz
By Anthony Harmetz

A developer and I have been working on a course for a client. The client started testing on its LMS--Cornerstone--today and ran into two major issues which reviewers hadn't experienced as they reviewed the course through the links we sent through Articulate 360 (and which we've never experienced with other courses).  Here are the problems:

  • Pixilation/Blurriness: Characters appear pixilated or blurry from time to time as the LMS administrator tests the course in Cornerstone Pilot, Cornerstone Production, and SCORM Cloud environments. The pixilation/blurriness is inconsistent, by which I mean both that it doesn't appear consistently for any one character throughout the course AND that on repeated viewings, the pixilation/blurriness doesn't appear at the same points in the course.
  • Getting Kicked Out of Course:  In all environments, learners periodically get kicked out of the course and are returned to the LMS's splash screen. This happens at random times in all 3 environments. And it happens without learners interacting with the course in any way....it just seems to occur randomly.

We suspect the problem is with the course we've developed since they don't report ever having had these issues with other courses, we've never had these issues before, and we've developed 8 or 9 courses for them before.  That said, we don't really have good guesses about what's wrong.  What ideas do you have about what might be wrong and what we might do to try to fix?  (Unfortunately the course has to launch on Monday as it's part of a larger initiative timed to launch Monday, hence the SOS.)

 

3 Replies
Allison LaMotte
over 6 years ago12/14/17 at 12:59 pm (UTC)

Hi Anthony,

Sorry to hear you're having issues!  Did you try uploading your course to SCORM Cloud to see if you experience the same behavior?

That's what we generally recommend doing to determine whether the problem stems from the course or the LMS. Here's an article that walks you through how to do that.

If it works correctly on SCORM Cloud, then the problem is coming from the LMS and you'll need to talk to your provider.

If you see the same issue on SCORM Cloud, then the problem is likely coming from the course itself. If that's the case, please reach out to our support team.

Anthony Harmetz
over 6 years ago12/14/17 at 4:08 pm (UTC)

Thanks, Allison, the client did upload to SCORM Cloud and the problem did not occur.  We've developed 10 courses for the client before without ever encountering the problem, and the client has loaded courses onto their LMS - Cornerstone - without ever experiencing the problem.  Here's a more specific description of the problem.  I'm wondering if you or anyone else has ever seen it before:

  • •The course played fine in SCORM cloud.
  • What happens in Pilot and Production is when you have multiple windows open on your desktop, the window with the course keep automatically moving to the very back of all the windows you have open. Therefore, you lose your sight of the online course but can hear the audio keep going.
  • This issue occurs without any interaction from the user and at random times as the course plays; the issue occurs at seemingly random times as the course plays, not at the same point in the course each time you play it
  • The LMS the client is testing on is Cornerstone

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