Forum Discussion
Building Courses that Communicate with each other
Hello Community,
I'm sure this has and can be done, but I haven't seen anything relating to what I'm trying to accomplish. I want to build a course that I'll call "Trainee". I want that course, once the learner fills out their information, to be able to populate onto the "Team Lead" course that I need to create. Both of those courses, once information is entered need to be able to populate onto another course, "Manager".
Basically the Learner, Team Lead and Manager will all have separate iPads. The Learner will enter their information and submit. That information should automatically populate onto the Team Lead's iPad. They have their own information to enter and then they will submit. That information goes to the iPad the Manager will have.
In the end, we want the Manager to be able to save that information and pull it up on some type of smart board / TV.
Does this have to be 3 seperate courses or can I build 1 course with multiple scenes?
Thanks for taking the time to read my post!
- Nathan_HilliardCommunity Member
Yes, you could do that. In SL360, you could build all three courses into separate scenes which would help with maintaing any custom coding, but I would probably publish them individually to maintain user separation unless you are going to implement some kind of access restriction.
I don't know if you are building this for an LMS or a standalone web course. SCORM packages in an LMS can, in theory, share data between one another but that rarely seems to be implemented or supported. I know that after exhaustive attempts, my university LMS does not support this.
If you have access to a learning record store (LRS), you can pretty easily store and retrieve data between courses if you have them designed with shared keys. If you can't do either of those, then you need an external means to store and share the data.
Some people have used things like Google Sheets to export and import data, but I believe this requires publicly accessible worksheets. There are several posts on this site regarding communications with Google Sheets. If you have sensitive data, that would not be the best option.
A database, like MySQL, could work as a more secure option for passing data between courses. If you have access to such a database, you can store and recall data within Storyline modules through a webpage hosted on an external server, allowing you to share information. You can search for MySQL on this site for an example.
Whatever your solution, it will take a fair amount of work to get everything working together.
- FredHarrisJrCommunity Member
Hello Mr. Hilliard and thanks for responding. This project isnt for an LMS, but rather just a standalone course. Basically the trainee will read a set of work instructions to build something. In the process, there's a checksheet that the trainee will fill out. I want that information to populate onto the Team Lead's interface and they will have their own checklist to fill out. Both of these then are sent to a Manager's interface where they will show the information on a smart tv / smart board. My issue is figuring out what variables / triggers would be needed to make this happen. You are correct in that if I build this into scenes, there has to be a way to prevent the trainee from accessing the Team Lead's interface and so on.
- Nathan_HilliardCommunity Member
Whatever solution you used, you would need to do some coding in addition to using variables and triggers to facilitate getting the data out of one SL module and into the other SL module. If you have an LRS, SL has built-in xAPI functionality to communicate however I'm not sure that will access the type of storage you need to send and receive custom data between modules. You can craft the xAPI call with JavaScript however. A Google Sheets solution would require some JavaScript coding. Both of these can be searched on this site.
The database solution is probably the most flexible, but it also requires the most resources and crafting JavaScript, PHP, and HTML code, plus a little SQL. Another post on this site covers the basics of how to do that.
I know some other users use different types of database solutions, so they may have additional input.
It's certainly doable, but you will need to research and plan according to your available resources and skills.
- SBP_IncCommunity Member
I would recommend going with the multiple scene approach, and use a few extra variables to restrict access to the different dashboards/entry points (trainer, lead and manager). I have created over four dozen similar courses and find the multiple scene approach the easiest, quickest and best supported option. Complex issues as Nathan suggested using databases, LRS, javascript and the likes prove way, way more complex and fragile.