Forum Discussion
Upload a published SCORM to Rise 360 to edit
I have got a published scorm file from a customer, they dont have access to the rise account it was made on and they need me to edit it for them. How can I upload the scorm file into my rise account so that I can edit it? I have seen some instructions online but I cant find the manage tab element?
Import Your Training into Rise
In Rise, select the Manage tab and then select Courses.
In the upper right, click the Import Course link.
On the window that displays, click Upload Course.
Select the SCORM package you exported in the previous step and, once the package is finished uploading, click Done.
Is this because I am still on my trial at the moment?
Any help appreciated.
25 Replies
Hi,
A previously exported SCORM ZIP file cannot be brought back into Rise 360 as an editable Rise course.
Thanks for this. What options are there to edit a previous published Rise 360? We work with contractors that develop the courses and then have to share the source files with us. How can we edit the files they send us?
Hi Toya,
The exported SCORM ZIP file is not considered a source file as it is not editable.
The source is the original Rise course.
If the contractor that developed the course for your organization still has access to the original course, there is a Rise function that allows them to send a copy to someone in your organization that has an active Articulate 360 subscription.
Hi Karl,
What are the above instructions referring to then?
This page refers to importing legacy courses?
Hi Melanie,
The link you provided above does not relate to the Rise 360 course authoring system.
As indicated in the URL, the link is referring to a related Articulate product https://rise.com/
I gets very confusing because Articulate uses "Rise" to refer to different combinations of their product offerings.
Rise.com combines the Articulate Rise LMS with the Rise course development system.
The above link provides instructions about how to upload a SCORM package into the Rise.com LMS course library for delivery to learners.
Ahh awesome, thanks for the clarification.
Hi, I work for a company that has articulate licenses. if a course was made by a former co-worker is it possible to access it somewhere?
Hi Jennifer,
Do you know if the former co-worker is still assigned an organization Articulate 360 seat/license?
I don't know, I can ask my IT department.
How does the contractor do this? ....
If the contractor that developed the course for your organization still has access to the original course, there is a Rise function that allows them to send a copy to someone in your organization that has an active Articulate 360 subscription.
I'm sure there is some highly complex reason behind this, but for Rise to be able to package up content into a scorm file but then not be able to unpack this same content makes no sense to me. I was hoping this might address the absence of any content recovery option, but alas just another monumental disappointment.
This is quite normal for authoring tools that create and publish content.
I haven't come across an authoring tool that can open and edit the published output.
I think the main reason being for this is the extra content that would need to be bundled up in the published output, and there are valid reasons for wanting to distribute the published content and not allow people to then take that content and open and edit in an authoring tool. It offers some protection to the owner of the content.
Published content is produced in a format that is optimised for deployment, whether that is a Word document, Web or for an LMS.
The source file is in a format that is optimised for the authoring tool.
Imagine if someone created the software to do this. 😏
As SamHill explained elsewhere in this thread "Published content is produced in a format that is optimised for deployment".
This means that the information that is required to make a Rise course editable, is stripped out and removed from the published version of the course.
So technically it is not possible to "unpack" a SCORM file and revert it to its editable version, as the required information to do so simply does not exist in the SCORM/Web published file.
I wanted to follow up on the claim that it is 'technically not possible' to modify a published SCORM file. While I understand that reverting the package back to the native Rise authoring UI isn't an out-of-the-box feature, modifying the published output is absolutely possible and actively done in the e-learning development community.
For instance, Discover eLearning has an open-source project called Fire Mods (https://discoverelearning.com/products/fire-mods/
Since a SCORM package is ultimately standard web architecture (HTML/CSS/JS), there is no technical barrier to editing the output; it simply requires a web development approach rather than relying solely on the authoring tool.
Hi elearning2
Whilst it is technically possible, it is outside of the capability of most Rise users, as it requires JavaScript programming experience. If you explore the published output you will find it is not so easy as all content is encoded in JavaScript. If you try and find a string of text from the content using CTRL+F, you will not find it.
Swapping out images is simple enough as they are all individual assets. Other stuff can be more complex due to how the course is published.
The course is more or less dynamically built to the webpage at runtime. You will not find individual HTML pages with text and images in the published output. This complicates things when considering building a tool that can edit the published output.
Building add-ons, as you referenced, is much easier, as you are adding to the existing course via JavaScript at runtime. I have built add-ons for Rise myself using JavaScript. The task of adding extra functionality, or content to the Rise course at runtime via JavaScript is very different to building a tool that would allow you to edit published Rise content.
It is technically possible, but it requires a skillset beyond the average Rise developer as is probably a niche enough thing that nobody has felt compelled to invest the time and money in building a tool that will allow users to edit the published output of Rise.
It's worth having a poke around in the published output to see what you are working with.
It's worth noting too, that there are many web applications/site around that are processed before being published for distribution, and you would find the same barrier to editing if you did not have the original project files (React, Vue etc) to edit rather than the distribution files. The distribution files may be a minified, uglified collection of JavaScript files and are not the files that are edited when making changes to the application. The original source files would be worked with before publishing the distribution files, and so the files you see on the web, are not likely to be the files the web developers actually work with.
I hope this clarifies things for you. I think it's good fun to poke around in the output of authoring tools to see how they function, but these are just distribution files and processed at run time. They are not very pretty to look at.
A question worth asking though!
Sam
Hi Sam. Thanks for the detailed explanation! As a game developer, I'm very familiar with how SPA frameworks compile, minify, and manage runtime state. I know that the course content isn't static HTML, but rather encoded as a base64-encoded JSON payload within the JavaScript packages (like window.courseData).
My point wasn't that the average Rise user should have to open a JS file and use CTRL+F. My point is that creating a lightweight GUI tool to decode that payload, allow basic string/hex edits, and re-encode it is a perfectly feasible engineering task. The technical barrier isn't that high for a developer; the real issue is simply that Articulate hasn't provided a native post-publish maintenance tool for agencies managing contractor transfers.
I appreciate the technical discussion! It's always interesting to analyze the inner workings of these authoring tools.
Best regards!
