Exit or Close Button?

+1 for close button

Hi Adam, on mobile in particular, but even on the desktop I try and steer clients away from popups.  If the course is inline then when you click the "Save & Exit" button or equivalent, the LMS just takes you back to the appropriate page, most often the course list page.

Using a popup model still works, the scorm API (provided by the LMS) completes its exit routine, redirects/refreshes the opener and closes the popup window.  Popups just aren't a very nice experience on mobile in my experience, so I try to avoid them.  They're only really useful when using development tools that aren't responsive and require a fixed/optimal stage size.  Popups then allow you to open a window sized appropriately which can give a nicer experience on the desktop.

Whether on mobile or on the desktop though I feel really strongly about supporting the user with screen elements that clearly explain what your options are.  The big 3 being next, back and exit (preferably "Save & Exit").  Particularly when you are working in sectors that don't do a lot of online training I find people get worried/frustrated if there isn't a clear safe way to save their session and resume later.  I also think it's pretty important from an accessibility point of view.

Does Rise use SCORMDriver?

If so it should be able to just call:

window.parent.ConcedeControl();

I talk about it in this blog post:

You'll want the exit behaviour to be "SCORM Recommended": see:

https://help.aura-software.com/using-scorm-cloud-without-the-popup-window/#setting-via-scorm-driver-configuration

Hi Bret and Kati, 

Rise works similar to Storyline in that we're sending the lmscommit to your LMS when you exit the course (using the browser close in Rise, or in Storyline you could also have an exit course button) or when you reach the completion element.  You can see and test this behavior at SCORM Cloud, which is an industry standard in LMS testing, and has a built in debug mode which I included snippet of a tested Rise course below, and on this attempt I closed the browser window:

On another attempt, the quiz was passed but we were still viewing the 2nd to last slide. At that time, my colleague looked at the reporting within SCORM Cloud to show it had the completion status correctly based on the quiz. So based on that the LMS should not need to close the browser window to record the completion. In case you'd like to test this as well, here is a great article on how to upload and test content at SCORM Cloud. 

If your LMS is still not recognizing completion with either the quiz or the browser close, we'll want to know a bit more information to help figure out next steps. What LMS are you using and SCORM Version have you published with? Does the LMS have access to any debug data like SCORM Cloud to see what is/isn't being passed? If you'd like to share a copy of your Rise export with our team to do some additional testing we're happy to take a look. You can upload the Rise export here. 

Sorry Bret and Kati - I hit post too soon, so I updated the above. :)

Traditionally I have not relied on close or exit buttons due to varying behaviours in different browsers... in some older IE browsers for example the exit simply does not work. Having said that an exit button would be useful, however should be tested across multiple browsers and versions.

Hi everyone, Just to highlight how critical a close button within the content actually is, here's a small test to show you how much can actually be achieved in an onbeforeunload handler.  The source code is linked to the page below, so feel free to download it and create your own test.  As you'll see Internet Explorer is the only browser that will give you near infinite time to execute requests when someone closes the browser.

http://www.andrewsmith.com.au/delay.html

While you might be finalising before the browser closes if the student completes the content, what about the scenario where someone wants to exit/bookmark and return?  Without a clear exit button within the content, the only way to do this is onunload or onbeforeunload.

The  time your browser will wait for whatever calls you make within these handlers varies per browser, but most only wait a very short period of time.  If you intend to set the session time, the score and the exit type for example in sequential requests (SCORM requires synchronous ajax), in a high latency environment, it's highly likely that 1 or all of these will fail.

So aside from the human side of this issue (be kind and let people know that they can safely save and exit) it simply isn't reasonable to expect that any synchronous ajax will complete during window close.

Andrew

Thanks Andrew for sharing that here - the test was a helpful demonstration. I've passed this along to our team in the form of a feature request so that it can be discussed internally. 

+ 1 for close button

+1 for close button