Forum Discussion
Everything we know about Cornerstone on Demand and Storyline!
I thought I would start a thread about Cornerstone on Demand so there's a central place for people to read and add to. There seems to be a dearth of information about how CSOD and Storyline interact with each other as well as the unresolved issues surrounding it. I've spent many hours scouring the web and speaking with Cornerstone trying to find a solution. Hopefully this thread will serve as a resource for others going forward.
On a side note, I love Articulate Storyline. I started with Adobe Captivate with limited success. It was a very steep learning curve, but I was able to get some basic functionality out of it. I tested out Storyline with it's 30 day trial, and I will say that time-to-effectiveness was drastically reduced. It really IS like using powerpoint. Granted there is less complex functionality and interactions available than Captivate, but so far it's given me everything I've needed to use. The benefit is that the learning curve is much less steep too. Think of it as the difference between iMovie and Final Cut Pro. The latter can do some crazy effects, but the former gives you 90% of what you need and can get you comfortable in 1/4 of the time.
It's nice to have a properly-working content creation tool when you're in an LMS like Cornerstone. I have enough trouble in CSOD as it is.
So some of the nuggets of wisdom that I've found are :
- Cornerstone does not track SCORM 1.2 content properly. You cannot pull a lot of the reports if they are not in SCORM 2004 format. You don't have the option to select that course in the reports.
- If you export into SCORM 2004, there will be an extra section on the left with text links to the module. This takes up 30% of the screen, and on smaller laptop screens may crowd out the module window. Cornerstone says this is a Storyline exporting settings issue. I couldn't find any settings that shows/hides that section. The workaround is to resize the module to the screen, which doesn't get rid of the section, but at least fits the module.
- When reporting, you can get the completion status for a course based on quiz result or last slide viewed. You can also get a final grade for course. Storyline passes the results information for each question (including short answer) but you cannot pull a list of the answers for an individual. Therefore, it may not be advisable to administer any testing where you'll need to review individual answers
- You can get a list of aggregate answers for a module. e.g. I can see how 100 employees answered this multiple choice question. This is helpful to determine if learners are absorbing the course information correctly.
- Web objects (such as websites, or links to sharepoint documents) work in modules if your IT has added csod.com to the trusted sites
- Popup windows that open up the articulate module in CSOD will work if you add csod.com to the allowed list for popup blockers. Your IT dept can also add this to everyone's computer. Otherwise when learners click the "launch" button, the module does not show up.
I'll post more as I think or find them, but feel free to add to this list!
Did I miss a part of this thread..? or another one?
In each case: AMP or Mobile COSD+Safari...Where can I find a sum up about the adequate :
>List of the Storyline activities (from the usual templates) and features (ie: Resource tab...) that won't work in IPad?
>Best Storyline 2 Player options (ie: resize broswer....+ scale player....)
>Adequate Publications settings (ie: HTML5 + allow mobile....+...allow downloading...)
>Best Course tracking and status (Complete/Incomplete seems to be the best options? vs Failed/Passed...)
Thanks a lot!
Hi Julie,
Choosing which option to utilize is entirely up to the individual and the needs of your clients. You may want to review the information here in terms of different features and how they'll work in Flash, HTML5 and AMP. I can't speak to or offer support for the CSOD app as it's a custom set up outside of our realm of purview.
As far as technical requirements the output that you utilize and the users system set up need to match the viewing requirements here.
Hope that helps clarify and perhaps others who have more experience with the CSOD app will be able to weigh in here as well.
Yes, Thanks Ashey, I am trying to receive some feedback from Storyline Heroes based on their experience and best practices with CSOD....:)
Does anyone have experience with reversioning courses in Cornerstone? We are changing just one word, and would like to have all users who haven't completed the training to receive the new version, and keep the same version for those who have already completed it..
Our experience has been, when reversioning as opposed to performing a file update, has been that users who have completed and those that were already registered and/or in progress retained their original versions. Newly registered users and those that we "kicked out" of the original version and then reenrolled received the new version. The result being some individuals did lose progress.
My question would be if you are only changing one word, does this warrant a reversion or is a file update all that is required. (i.e does that one word change the meaning of the training so fundamentally that it is important that those that already took the training have access to the old word?) Are there any regulatory concerns? In one of our cases, some bit of code was corrupted and caused the course to lock up and a reversion was absolutely necessary. In most other cases it was sufficient to update, document and retain the source file when the change was made should a regulatory agency need to see what version or revision our learner saw (1.0, 2.0, 2.1 etc.)
Thank you for the detailed response, Matthew!
We have not considered updating, and that's something that we haven't done before.. How would you perform an update?
I'm curious about which edition of SCORM 2004 people use in Cornerstone and if it makes a difference. Cornerstone says they support the 2nd or 3rd edition. I'm thinking, "go with the newest one" but with SCORM that hasn't always been the best idea in my experience, so does one work better than the other?
New problem: I decided to set up a bunch of Storyline courses in Cornerstone to have completion based on number of slides viewed. So for a course with 25 slides, I set it to 24 (giving the user a slide they can miss). However, I am getting numerous reports now that these courses are not completing for people even though they say they are viewing all the slides before exiting the course.
So now I want to modify these courses so they complete based on a one question quiz at the end and ditch the "number of slides" criteria (because 1. it doesn't seem reliable and 2. it is the learner's word vs the LMS since I can't really argue when they say they viewed all the slides)
The Question: Since I am changing the way a course is completed, can I just modify it without creating a new version of the course? Or is this a significant enough change that I need to create a new version.
Hi Will,
You'll have to create a new version. I've been told by Cornerstone support that just replacing the file will only work for a very minor change like fixing a spelling error. When I tried to do this before and just replaced the file, no one was getting the newer version if they already had it on their transcript. Creating a new version fixed that issue.
Sounds like you are adding a slide and changing what is reported to the LMS. As a rule, we deem that significant enough to warrant a new version.
Here's the rub. While the new version will go out to anyone who is registered for the course after it is reversioned, the new version does not go out to users who already have the course on their transcripts by default unless you push the new version out to them. Also, reversion does require you to go back into the catalog and reset your populations/availability, etc. In order for users who are already registered in the course to get your new version, you will need to redo the proxy enrollment using the "Force" enrollment option. Some users may lose progress, so you may wish to evaluate specifically how many in progress users do you have and to whom do you wish to push the new version.
Any time I can avoid a reversion, I do. We have successfully used slide count to log completions. The most common offender in the slide count is a lightbox or branching slide. That said if your course has a menu it should be pretty easy to determine if they missed a slide. We request a screen shot as proof for something like that.
Thank you for laying out the challenges involved with reversioning. We're about to launch CSOD and I'm sure this is something we're going to run into.
Glad you are finding some assistance here Scott!
I just wanted to let you know that when you reply to the forums via e-mail, your signature is included. You are welcome to pop in and edit if needed.
Thank you, Leslie - I appreciate that!
Hello!
I'm experiencing an issue similar to one that was posted in this thread a few days ago.
We have a course that I've set to complete at slide 159 out of 162 -- as the last 3 slides are recap. The problem we're experiencing is that the course is registering as complete on CSOD for some users, and not for others -- even though they say they have gotten through all the slides and clicked the embedded "Exit Course" button on the last slide. It is particularly odd, because I can have users in the same location/office experience two different outcomes -- one reporting as complete and one reporting as incomplete.
The course was built in Storyline 2, published using SCORM 1.2 and reporting to LMS set as Passed/Incomplete. The course contains narration and numerous branching scenarios.
Could this be a CSOD issue or an issue with how the course was published? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
I would be willing to bet in some of these cases you have an end user issue. You have a pretty long course. Long courses lend themselves to multitasking. The user forgets they are in the course, it times out or they open a second session of the course.
Whether it times out or the user has two sessions of the same course running concurrently the LMS does not properly track progress or completions. When the user goes back in they find that the majority of the course is not complete (even to the point of starting back at the very first slide). We actually put a warning on our launch page to notify users to be careful not to open two instances of a course at the same time. Other possibilities are missing one of your branches, or closing a lightbox before the content has completed.
If you get a screen shot from the user of their SL course menu you should be able to figure out where they missed. If they claim to have done it all and the course (when resumed) starts at a slide that is way before the exit slide, they likely timed out, or opened the course twice.
Thanks, Matthew!
My initial hypothesis was that it is at the end user level, and since most of the users are taking this course in a busy environment it could lend to multi-tasking and/or to stopping and starting of the course.
We tested a variety of scenarios, including stopping and resuming the course a few hours/days later. Everything worked fine when we were testing -- but, as we all know, just because it works in testing doesn't mean that works in production! LOL!
Nonetheless, I did some digging on the CSOD Success Center and tried publishing the course as Complete/Incomplete and pushed the course completion setting to 150 out of 162. We'll see what happens next!
Thanks again for your help! :)
Kimberlee, are your users on Internet Explorer 9 by chance? I just found out that IE9 is (or was) notorious for not tracking Flash SCORM objects very well. Our users currently have a choice of IE9 or Chrome, and I'm wondering now if IE9 is at fault here.
This begs the question - would changing the Cornerstone's Compatibility Mode option to IE8 instead of IE9 fix this? (One of the solutions to the IE9 tracking problem is to turn on compatibility mode see https://www.articulate.com/support/presenter-09/lms-tracking-issues-with-internet-explorer-9 )
I know this is an old thread, we are currently implementing Cornerstone On Demand and I use Articulate Storyline 2. Has anyone had experience with tracking video views to see how much people are watching?
We haven't tracked it, but from what I can see in custom reports it can be done.
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Has anyone had an issue with CSOD where you update a publication (not reversion; just replace the publication files because you made a text change) and then the course can't be launched? I did that with one of our courses today. I deleted the existing files and reloaded the .zip file into the publication. Now when I test it, I get a file 404 error.
Any thoughts?
We are currently evaluating Cornerstone and I want to make sure that the reporting is accurate for SCORM 1.2 Are people still having problems with the reporting?
