Forum Discussion
Learners progress not being tracked
We have a large range of courses that we offer our learners, all created in Storyline and shared via 360 Learning.
Our content manager is complaining that she is seeing an increasing number of learners being forced to repeat courses because it has lost their progress when they return the next day. These are mostly not created by me, but have become my issue to resolve.
It is suspected that these learners are simply closing the tab without stopping or exiting the course or the LMS in any way.
This appears to have the most impact on larger courses, which makes sense since they take longer to complete. Other than breaking these courses into smaller chapters or modules, what should I be looking for to assess and resolve this issue?
The things I'm considering (but don't now how to test) are:
- Browser version
- the default browser on all work stations is Internet Explorer, but Chrome is available on all.
- Scorm version
- I've only recently started publishing with 2004. When I joined the team I was told we needed to publish as 1.2. Could the solution be as simple as republishing?
- xAPI
- I don't know anything about this yet. But, I wondered if sending data to the LMS with every slide change would force it to acknowledge the progress.
- What is the best way to test an intermittent issue like this (affecting about 5% of learners) so that I can be confident when I say the issue is resolved.
18 Replies
This could be a suspend data issue. If that is the case I would recommend publishing Scorm2004 3rd or 4th edition to increase the Suspend data.
Thanks Ron,
I'm pretty sure the chapter giving the most problems was already updated to Scorm2004 ed 4. But, I'm going to double check my course pathing and see if maybe there are users still being routed to the older save version. I'm not in charge of uploading to the platform, but I got some usernames from last week that had the issue and should be able to trace it. 🤞
Could be Internet Explorer issue, Storyline no longer supports Internet Explorer
Thanks Phil. I've added an opening slide that has them confirm their browser, so we're relying less on them remembering to use Chrome and actually checking in. My research showed that attempts to capture the browser in use was unreliable, so we're using the honest questioning method.
I would work to eliminate Internet Explorer from the list of possible culprits, as even Microsoft no longer supports it:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/internet-explorer-11
Unfortunately, not only does the company insist on having IE available, it is set as everyone's default browser, for reasons I won't go into here.
I haven't found a way to force them not to use IE for training. Everyone is instructed on their first day that training should always be accessed via Chrome. So, I've created this starting slide to add to my projects.
Hi HoneyTurner,
Ron and Phil gave some great advice here!
Testing the course in a supported browser is a solid first step. Here's a list of browsers to try. Additionally, you can try testing your course in SCORM Cloud. If the course plays as expected there, it's likely an LMS-related issue. If it doesn't work, then it'd be helpful to see your file for further troubleshooting.
Thanks Kelly,
I've decided on a combined solution using both their feedback.
Will Scorm Cloud reveal something with such a low incidence or would I need to watch it 20+ times to replicate the 5% occurance?
Internet Explorer is end of life and has been for 3 years. It doesn't support modern web standards. It poses huge risks for security and data protection. At this stage any company that needs it for legacy apps should be running it in an isolated and sandboxed environment.
I don't disagree. I've suggested that at the very least they make Chrome the default so that opening IE is the rare exception. I'm not the decision maker on that. Voicing my opinion is all I can do; and adapt my content to the environment my workplace provides -- just like all of us do.
Just scary that they would still use it especially as the default browser.
I just clued in. I've been saying Internet Explorer, but meaning Edge. 🤦🏻♀️
Edge is better than IE, but still not compatible with most of the activities we're expected to do at work, so still just as problematic to have it as the default. Though perhaps not as alarming from an overall security standpoint.
Edge won't be the issue as long as it is chromium based.
That's reassuring. And puts us back at the other solution of making sure it's saved as Scorm2004 ed 4.
I know it's pretty low-tech, but has anybody thought about asking some of those who are being forced to start over to see if they remember where they left off and what was the last thing they did?
We have Cornerstone SBX (aka Saba) and it maddeningly requires the learner to click the [CLOSE PLAYER] button in the upper-right of the course window when exiting to send the "yes, I actually AM exiting the course" message (think Redundant Department of Redundancy). If they don't, their completion status doesn't get set to Completed/Passed, even though that is exactly what SCORM is already sending. 🙄I have asked for this info. I'm getting the answers second hand, but occasionally I get useful info.
The last agent confirmed they were clicking the Storyline Close button (which should be sending course complete/finish, then exit course). The agent reports that it tells them they can close the window, but doesn't take them to the next chapter in the path. and shows they're stuck at 50% progress for the chapter they just finished.
However, of the agents with issues, it seems to be about 50/50 for those who say they've done the entire course, but it still showing as incomplete (and 50% in the backend) vs those who have done part of it and had to start again instead of resume.
The next thing I would try is Enable LMS Debug Mode and run a course from the beginning to see if data is being truncated (SCORM 1.2 has a 4,096 character suspend data limit; SCORM 2004 3rd and 4th Editions bump that up to 64,000 characters).
