Forum Discussion
XAPI - recording course duration in Absorb LMS incorrectly
Hello,
Our LMS provider is absorb and I publish courses from storyline 360 as XAPI files (tin can). The duration that a learner spends on a course in any attempt is being recorded incorrectly, if multiple attempts. Absorb regularly confirms a user has spent seconds on a course instead of the accurate time duration, when there is multiple attempts to complete a course. If a learner completes a course in a single attempt the time appears to be recorded correctly.
After lengthly discussions with Absorb, they are blaming the configuration of the published files in the software and said it is potentially 3 options, I have listed below:
1. The course frequently disconnects from our Tincan/Scorm Driver (prompting the exact 5s attempt durations) - this disconnect being caused when the learner signs out, as this is when the issue becomes reproducible. However it is important to note here this information comes from the course.
2. The course is sending interation or single slide duration back to Absorb instead of a the whole time spent associated with the session. Again, this information comes directly from the course.
3. The course breaks up into multiple sessions, sends time spent for each of them and we only keep/showcase the most recent one for the attempt. So, a single attempt could (incorrectly) contain 5 sessions, 5 time spents are returned by the 1/5 chunk is a small enough piece of time to look incorrect.
Does anyone have any ideas how we can track the course duration correctly in absorb LMS or configure how we publish XAPI files.
Absorb have also confirmed the following:
This is not an issue we could reproduce with any other xAPI files.
I have asked absorb to confirm to which other XAPI files they are referring to, as all of our files are published in the same fashion. Or what is the difference between these working XAPI files and ours.
I'm waiting for absorb to come back to me regarding further questions I have raised to them as I'm struggling to understand what they mean.
Any help or advice greatly appreciate.
Thank you
3 Replies
Hi Steve,
Did you ever get any resolution for this? We use Absorb and are having very similar course duration problems.
Hello CRios,
If you're having trouble accurately tracking the amount of time your learners spend on your course, you can use Storyline 360's elapsed time variables to get a better representation of the actual time spent by your learners. You can then send the value of these variables to your LMS for reporting purposes by following the steps here. You may need to contact Absorb LMS's support team if you'd like to use their built-in course duration tracking, but hopefully someone from the community shares recommendations!
Hope this points you in the right direction!
Thanks Jose. We actually have this issue with Rise courses as well. It seems every time we report an issue to Absorb they say that we're the "only one" having that issue. So I was hoping to hear from other Absorb users to see if they also have this problem or have found a resolution.
