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!
Another option is to upload your video to a streaming service, and then insert it into your Storyline course as a web object.
Why do this? Well, a downside of inserting a video directly into Storyline, versus embedding a video from a streaming service (like Akamai) is that you really need to compress your video for the weakest potential internet bandwidth of your users, or expect that some users with poor connections are going to encounter video buffering because, as Steve said, Storyline's bitrate is fixed, while a streaming service tries to adapt the bitrate for the user's situation. Having said that, it seems there will always be someone who has problem playing an internet-based video no matter what you do.
On the other hand, if, instead of inserting your video directly into Storyline, you embed video from Youtube/Brightcove/Akamai/Vimeo etc..., and your company decides to stop using one of those services, you will have a lot of revisions to make.
Also, be prepared to be frustrated that Youtube/Brightcove/Akamai/Vimeo's players full screen button won't function when viewing in CSOD's Online Course player.
Hello together,
I have a question regarding a published training. I prepared a training for a client and at first it worked quite well. But now after a month or two, it behaves funny. Participants have to click buttons ceveral times and sometimes it works and sometimes it just stops working at all. I also checked the source files and they looked ok. Is there anything what I can do about it? They use an internal Learning Management System to upload the files. Its name is Cornerstone.
Thank you in advanced for your help!
Gina
Hello Gina - Are they viewing the material in a supported environment as specified here? Sounds like you still have the source file, so I would advise uploading to SCORM Cloud for comparison. This will help identify if the issue lies within the project or the LMS.
Hi!
I just edited a trigger on a button. It was mistakenly set to jump to "unassigned slide" and I set it to jump to the correct slide.
Will CSOD allow me to simply upload the new slides (like when I edit text on a slide) or am i going to have to reversion the course?
Thanks!
My bet is that you can just Replace rather than Reversion in this case, but I tend to live on the wild side on this issue, - I figure that what can break a course is based around changes to the SCORM completion criteria (e.g. number of slides when the completion is based on number of slides, quiz score changes, number of quiz questions, etc..). If there aren't changes to what signifies completing a course, I assume Replace is ok. (Probably in part out of wishful thinking, but also it seems my experience bears this out).
I always delete out all the old course files before replacing. (I don't trust CSOD's file comparison tool to sift through the files and only upload the one's that have changed - it seems good in theory, but unreliable in practice - maybe this is to blame because when you repackage a course in Storyline, changed in structure are inevitable).
Hi!
In CSOD or Articulate settings - does anyone know how to make the course automatically PAUSE a video when the learner clicks on another window? For example, if they are watching a video, we need it to pause if they open up their email tool.
Thank you!
I am not aware of any way to do this other than telling the learner to do it manually, e.g. "please pause the video and switch to Outlook..."
Or just break the video into segments and out each segment in a different slide where each segment ends when they are supposed to switch to email.
But maybe you are asking because you are trying to prevent them from trying to multitask by switching away from the learning module and working on email while it runs in the background? The only solution to that in my opinion is to make them answer good quiz questions on the content.
Hi Jaime,
Thanks for reaching out! It's not a setting within Articulate so I'll defer to the group of Cornerstone experts here. Best of luck with your project.
Hello All,
I'm trying to figure out the properties for an exam. I want the user to launch the exam once. I want to capture the completion and score. If the user fails the exam, I do not want them to have the capability to re-launch that exam. I basically want to lock the exam after 1st attempt. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
I would use Cornerstone's built-in test engine for this.
Way to reach out to the community Sasha - they are pretty helpful and savvy for sure. Wanted to link to our discussion here as well.
Yep. Either use the test engine or publish with the Storyline setting to always restore and don't allow navigation away from the results slide or resetting results. That way you'd need to re-proxy enroll (LAT) them into the module to allow navigation after finishing the test in order for someone to restart the test.
Hello - I need to limit quiz attempts to one attempt as well for the first time. I thought that I could do this with these instructions:
https://community.articulate.com/series/4/articles/limiting-quiz-attempts-in-articulate-storyline-2Am I missing something?
Thank you for any feedback. Sighle
Hello Sighle - As long as you are still in the same session, that solution should work well for you. That solution does not apply if the user is starting a subsequent session, as that would be controlled via LMS. Do you have a .story file that you'd like to share for us to take a look at?
Hi Leslie,
I do need it to retain between sessions. I'm working on seeing if using "automatically resume state" will keep the "Attempts" variable set. If not I will need to use another authoring package that allows me to save the variable back to the LMS since Storyline doesn't let me do that. I don't know of any way to have the LMS know that without the course sending the information via SCORM.
