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!
Hi Deborah!
Have you had a chance to test your output in another environment, like SCORM Cloud? While we want your courses to work well in CSOD as well, SCORM Cloud is an industry standard. Testing your content there will help to narrow down the cause of the issue.
Hi Deborah. You shouldn't need to adjust anything in the browser or downgrade the compatibility from Cornerstone. This seems like a bad idea since the browser support for IE8-10 are terrible for HTML5 outputs.
Setting the course launch settings Compatibility mode to none should be all that's needed to tell the browser to run the HTML5 output at default IE11 settings. Couple of questions:
What browsers and browser versions are displaying the issue?If you're seeing this in IE11, check these two settings:
- Gear Icon > Compatibility View Settings. Is your learning portal listed under compatibility view?
- With a course launched, hit F12. This will open the Developer Tools. Click the Emulation tab and look at the Document mode setting. Does it display 11 (Default) or something else? The User agent string should also display Internet Explorer 11 (Default). This is the normal behavior and the way it works for us from Cornerstone.
I don't believe this is a Storyline problem. It likely has something to do with the course settings or browser settings for your organization. If the same course works in SCORM Cloud, this confirms the issue isn't the content.
Hi All,
I have been noticing a trend in the amount of eLearning's showing as incomplete in Cornerstone and users claiming they have completed them. I have actually done a screen share and watched it happen to many users. The problem is that I can't seem to narrow down the cause.
On approximately 15% of the users, they complete the slide with the course completion trigger and it just doesn't mark them complete (I usually put the trigger on the second to last slide just in case). It seems to be happening quite often, but random enough that we can't track down the cause. It seems to be happening to all eLearnings whether they were created in Storyline or not. I know it has nothing to do with browser compatibility because they have to use chrome and the other 85% people are able to complete it with no issue. I know 15% doesn't sound that much, but when you multiply that by a large number of employees, it ends up being way too much. I currently have about 800 people complaining of the issue with just one training launched recently. Anyone else experiencing this issue with Cornerstone not marking elearning's as complete when it should?
Are the courses that are not completing typically longer than others? And if so are they “launching in a new window?” I’m wondering if Cornerstone is timing out because it thinks the course has been inactive. I read at the Cornerstone support site that using a pop-up window to display your course can cause this* (i.e. the “Launch player in new window” setting in Storyline). Just a hunch though. We haven’t seen this issue in our portal.
Will
I am seeing it even with a short 10 slide course that takes the user 1-2 minutes to complete. I don't have the launch in a new window setup.
In the past we have seen this with long courses or courses with long segments of video (10+ minutes). If memory serves we cut up video into smaller segments and implemented brief interactions to keep the connection "live" . In addition, we put some scripting in place to "call" the LMS and verify the connection is still live and notify the learner via pop up if the connection drops.
A more common situation we had seen is with users multitasking. A learner who is passively going through a course while navigating through other windows, opens a second instance of a course. He/she completes the course in one of those windows and then later closes the other course instance which bookmarks where the "incomplete" instance was rather than the course completion.
Good luck.
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for your input on the situation. I have watched people actually do the training and it not complete, so I know that it is not the user multitasking. It is definitely something else that is happening. I think it has to do with losing the connection since it seems so erratic. Would you by any chance be willing to share the scripting you are talking about to make sure the connection is live?
Thanks,
Jamie
How long is your Cornerstone portal set to "stay active"? In an older LMS (not Cornerstone) our system was set to stay active for only 2 hours. If someone left a course open and didn't finish it till later in the day, our network would lose the active connection between their activity and the LMS. The course would work properly for the employee and they could complete and finish it, but the SCORM information was no longer being sent back to the LMS, so the course progress in the LMS would remain inprogress instead of completed.
Also, there was a recent new feature that Cornerstone rolled out in the last quarterly release where you could turn on a feature that would let the employee know if they lost the connection to the portal. Perhaps that is something you could enable?
Also, here's an article about debugging:
https://community.articulate.com/articles/the-secret-to-lms-debugging
Thanks Melanie! I actually hadn't read that article. Cornerstone is not really willing to help identify the issue, so that is why I turned to the community for help. I will check out the logs and see if I can interpret anything.
I will run down that rabbit hole and see if I can get you that information. It may be early next week before I can find that, but I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Hi all,
This past week, we have noticed a recurring issue with courses that we built in Storyline 360 and are hosted on Cornerstone. We've had two users complain about seeing only a blank slide in the respective courses they were taking. The Articulate player and menu is there but the screen is just white. Note that this occurred in two different courses. Has anyone ever encountered this issue before?
Our course menu is set to restricted to allow our users to click Next only when the whole slide has been displayed. Now that nothing is coming up in those slides where they got stuck, they can't move on to the next one and are unable to complete the course.
I'm not sure whether this is an SL360 problem or a CSOD problem but I'm hoping to hear anyone's insights on this.
Thanks,
Nicole
I have experienced similar issues with Cornerstone and Captivate. It may be the Pop-Up blocker is on for the browser.
[Daves
Hi Dave,
Thank you for responding. The browser was able to open another window for the course but while the user was taking it, one of the slides just appeared as a blank stage. I have attached a screenshot for reference.
None of the elements appeared and now the user can't move past this slide.
Nicole
We have experienced a blue screen fill the work space, sadly we have not
solved the problem, except to give the learner a new registration.
It has not been replicated in scorm cloud, and the new registration allows
the same user, same computer, same browser to user the same course...Hi Nicole,
We have seen something similar on our end. The issue only occurred for one user and we were able to replicate when we proxied in. Our Band-Aid was to modify the offending slide using the "modify content" option by adding a keyboard shortcut to advance that particular slide (or show layer, or whatever was necessary) and/or send the learner the text of that slide to ensure they had seen the content. It wasn't perfect but it got the job done. As of today, it only happened to one user but at least she didn't have to redo the entire course. (wonky slide was in the review)
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for sharing your solution! It would be great if the user didn't have to repeat the whole course. Is the "modify content" option a feature in Cornerstone?
Hi Nicole -
Is this appearing for both users in IE? If so, is this IE11? We've seen some hanging issues in courses in the past but most of the loads we have that freeze up don't result in this symptom. To provide a little more info on the specific freeze, you might ask the user to hit the F12 key, then open the console tab. The console tab could contain an error that would help to point to the cause for Articulate Support.
The other thing you might try is to proxy in as the user to see if you can replicate the issue on launch or, if possible, launch from another browser to see if the symptoms stay the same.Sorry you're dealing with this:) I know how it is trying to track down these user browser issues. Not the user's fault and it's frustrating.
Hi Steve,
Both users took the course in IE11 and when they got stuck on those respective slides, we asked them to resume the courses in Google Chrome which did not fix the issue. I'll have to try the method you suggested with the F12 key to see any specific errors as we aren't allowed to proxy in for our users.
Thanks, Steve!
One of the ways we are trying to get our learners to access Storyline / Rise output is through the secured (MS In Tune?) corporate mobile browser (Edge) - I can log into Cornerstone via SSO fine and use all of the 'Performance' parts but when I try to launch any piece of elearning (or material oddly) it doesn't load. We get a screen come up with 'If the training does load, click here to open it'. If you click on this then it opens a new tab that is empty but nothing loads.
The same elearning launches fine if I open it using the actual CSOD Learn app (have to log in as can't get it to work with our SSO at the moment)
Any ideas or anyone had similar issues?
I'm clutching at straws a bit here but know there a re lot of very knowledgeable people in this community and its always worth an ask.
Hi Chris, do you have the SCORM to open in a pop up when you published the course?
Hi James and thanks for replying, we don't specify anywhere in Storyline that the course should open in a popup. Don't seem to be able to open any elearning, irrespective of what software or settings were used to publish it. Trying to work out if its an authoring tool issue (doubtful) or a CSOD issue or something to do with the way our IT have set up the secured corporate mobile browser
Hi Chris,
I had the exact same behavior happen to me when trying to open up any elearning using the OKTA mobile app because it launched in their own built-in browser that didn't support it playing eLearning's on Mobile. My solution is just to have them use the Cornerstone app instead of the browser. Elearning's in Cornerstone automatically launch in a new browser window no matter what you do, so you can't change that. You can specify in preferences full window, 800x600 window, or just a new tab though. However, I don't think any of those preferences will will probably help your situation. I would suggest trying other browsers and seeing if you can get it to work. If you can, then you know it is the browser causing the problem. It may have to do with pop-up blocker or it may just be that your browser is out of date and doesn't support mobile eLearning's.
Jamie, Unfortunately we are having security issues with getting the actual Learn app on corporate kit (fingers crossed will get it eventually but we also wanted to allow people to access via the browser (especially the performance side of CSOD). The browser is controlled by IT but I think its current and elearning run through the Review 360 tool works fine on it. Thanks for the info
Run a Fiddler Trace and look to see if some content is being blocked. Here is a good article on how to do this:
Thanks Will but our systems stop me downloading any software.
Has anyone set up pre course scnario assessments - whereby if the learner passes the module completes and they dont need to work through the whole elearn but if they fail they get forced through the elearn content. At the min we run assessments outside of storyline and have two LO's showing in a curriculm. I cant see how I can build a pre test in cornerstone that will then complete the module if they pass
Why don't you built a test as a scorm Storyline/Rise etc, then make the test module a completed equivalent of the 2 LO's?
I may be being dumb but I am not sure what you mean?
A new type of critical error started to appear in the SCORM Uploader when I try to upload Rise courses that have Storyline elements in it.
Multi standards (AICC/ SCORM/ xAPI) are not allowed in one file. Please create a separate file per each (AICC or SCORM or xAPI) and try again.
All other Rise courses that don't have Storyline components are working as expected.
Has anyone else encountered this?
I found an answer in a separate thread so I thought I would share here. Hopefully this is a temporary issue.
Steve Flowers
Hi Roni. Deleting the tincan.xml files from the zip should fix the problem until Cornerstone or Articulate find a way to handle it.
1) Unzip the SCORM file.
2) Search the unzipped folder for tincan.xml.
3) Delete the tincan.xml files that return in the search.
4) Rezip the contents of the unzipped file, ensuring that the imsmanifest file is at the root of the zip.
** If you don't remove the tincan.xml files from the imsmanifest file, you'll get warnings for every missing file. Not a big deal. It'll still upload.
