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!
The example above was for SCORM 1.2. You'll see different data model calls in SCORM 2004. For example, lesson_status is completion_status in 2004.
Part 2 of the long explanation. In a conformant LMS, all of the runtime calls listed in the reference model can be called from the browser using Javascript. This means even if the content (storyline) doesn't have it built in, you could use Javascript to access the API to set or get values.
Example, if you wanted to add something to the comments data field, you could call LMSSetValue on the cmi.comments_from_learner.n.comment and store away some text. You'd need a way to retrieve that within the module since you cannot report this data in CSOD.
Storyline stores quiz responses in the cmi.interactions data elements. This can be reported using CSOD. There are a lot of cmi-interactions... calls when a question is submitted. Not that only questions associated with the results slide used to track completion of your module will be submitted by Storyline. There are neat things you can do to store values using a quiz question.
Another note, Storyline uses a standard API to submit to the LMS. But the player uses an abstraction of functions to reach that end. If you want to communicate with the LMS directly, you can choose to use the standard LMS API calls in Javascript, or use Storyline's abstracted functions.
Example direct call:
LMSSetValue('cmi.core.score.max', '100')... and all of the other score setting calls (raw, min)
or Storyline's player functions:
lmsAPI=parent;
lmsAPI.SetScore(90, 100, 0);
SetStatus("completed")I've found the manual calls to be less reliable and subject to change so much of the time, I have been setting them directly using the standard calls. It's more script but I know it's going to go through even if Articulate changes something in their player functions.
:) I'm going to miss having (mostly) reliable browser runtimes. I suspect the way content is assembled will lean in the direction of less proprietary and sensitive javascript driven assemblies toward more graceful fallback in a clean web output with standard media embeds.
We're all at the mercy of browser idiosyncrasies. More so now that there isn't an embedded runtime like Flash built to run things the same no matter what the container.On one hand, I'm glad to see Flash finally breath its final breath. We can move on. On the other, I don't think most people understand what they were asking for and how it will affect some niche industries. We'll adapt. :)
The only reason I publish with Flash fallback is because of the (probably unfounded) worry that some user somewhere has still has Internet Explorer 9 (or, the horror, IE 8) on their computer. At this point this fear may be irrational, so it might be useful to try and find out if there really is anyone using one of these outdated browsers still instead of using the fallback.
Regarding courses published in the past starting to have issues - the most immediate example of this is outlined in this post about how Chrome and Safari (and I've also heard Firefox) have stopped allowing audio to autoplay in HTML5: https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/what-we-re-doing-to-help-you-update-your-courses-for-browser-auto-play-settings
Another example I've come across seems to involve drag and drop interactions, which I've posted about here: https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/drag-and-drop-activity-broke-after-upgrade-to-google-chrome-64-on-mac
Unfortunately we do not have time to republish courses on a regular basis to keep them refreshed. If someone reports a course has a problem, we would republish then. We do use Modify in situations like this if an all possible. Sometimes we swap in the old imsmanifest.xml file into the new version's zip file if CSOD insists that we've made a critical error (though I'm sure there is some peril in doing this. It's kind of a sketchy Han Solo move you might say).
Hi Victoria,
The course completion triggers are not built into Storyline 3, but are in Storyline 360. Sorry for any confusion shared here.
How are you tracking the course prior to the user exiting?
There are some limitations in HTML5 browsers with the exit course trigger that you can read about here.
Hi Leslie,
The chart at the page you referenced seems incomplete -- I frequently use the Exit Course trigger in Chrome and it works, at least when the content is hosted in CSOD. The window doesn't close, but the course is replaced with the message "The content has ended. You may close this window."
When that chart says "it doesn't work," what does that mean? My suspicion is that it means the browser window doesn't close. I think the chart should be amended to include information about whether you are in an LMS or not, as it seems to work fine when the content is showing in a SCORM window in CSOD.
Hey Will!
Thanks for confirming that it works well in CSOD for you. I think that's what started this most recent conversation.
I apologize if that chart was confusing, it's moreso for troubleshooting and I should preface with this information.
Thanks for your feedback.
I spent quite a lot of time trying to get 'trustable' question level data reported in CSOD. Unless I limited the quiz in Storyline to one attempt I could never be sure the results being displayed in CSOD were correct. We still really want to be able to get question data out but are currently not using as the data is not accurate. I would love it if someone worked out how to do it. I know this isn't an overly helpful response but its kind of reassuring that I'm not alone and not just going mad. :)
My client is using Cornerstone and I am creating eLearning in Storyline v 3.0. Everything was fine until a couple of weeks ago and now audio files aren't starting, graphics are greyed out and all sorts of malarkey.
I tried saving in both SCORM 2004 and 1.2, but the LMS is having the same problem. She experiences NO problems when running the course locally on her computer.
Any suggestions or insight on what might be going on? Did Cornerstone have a recent update? Also, what of this compatibility button. Click or not?
Thanks heroes!
Hi all, we have a simple 25 question quiz where we are sending the individual scores through to be reported in CSOD. The questions are split into 4 topics areas so that we can then point the learners to relevant materials to help in topics they are weak on. I'm quite happy in setting up Storyline to display topic scores inside the learning (variable per topic) but was wondering if there is any way to send this information through so its reportable in CSOD (ie. The report can identify which topic each question is in relation to).
The only option I can currently think of is to include the topic name in the question stem so that the 'quiz question description' include sit in the CSOD report. We could then manually sort/filter to see info per topic. This will work but is a bit manual.
Any ideas/observations appreciated.
Hi Chris,
There's the old trick of reporting survey responses, then make the survey variable = the topic score when the timeline starts.
This may work for you?
Hi Holly - There is an issue with IE that can appear if web fonts are blocked by policy or browser configuration. Hitting F12 then going to the Console might indicate this is what's going on in this case.
A few of us have lobbied for a fix to this issue. There is a workaround but it requires opening up the CSS in the published output and carefully adding a fallback font common to Windows machines. This workaround will improve the issue but isn't guaranteed to fix the font issue 100%.Thanks Steve!
Oh and here are instructions from Articulate (#1 doesn’t apply because Cornerstone is the hosting server): https://articulate.com/support/article/Learners-See-the-Wrong-Font-or-Missing-Letters-in-Internet-Explorer
