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Dec 06, 2017

Cindy Holland
By Cindy Holland

We are working with a large corporation that hosts the rise modules on their internal LMS system. 

Here is an example of one of the assets we created. 

http://dialectic.solutions/wp-content/uploads/samples/RC/P1/How-Values-Boost-Your-Freedom-And-Energy-At-Work/index.html

With some hacks we have been able to add "share this" functionality to the site. We want our users to share what they have learned with the outside world. Part of this would be creating "Teasers" of the rise modules that would sit on the open web, for anybody to view. These teasers would then direct them to the portal where they can signup and pay for the course etc.

Here is an example of our "teaser"

http://dialectic.solutions/RC-DERM/101/shareable/index.html

I want to use the mapping tool option as an item someone could share. HOWEVER. I don't think in this use case we need to have them "Continue" or "Start Course" - I really just want them to come directly to the first lesson. 

So that it's the first thing they view. Is something like that possible, has anybody come across a hack that would accomplish this?

 

176 Replies
Tim Danes
3 years ago03/09/21 at 11:59 pm (UTC)

Hi Crystal.  I've been following this thread for at least a couple of years, and I don't think there's been any sign of it appearing as a priority in Articulate's roadmap.  Hopefully the following may offer a little insight to help promote it as a priority.

I think the original user story was something like;
As a course owner, I want to turn off the front page so that the user can jump straight into the course.
I think this is an overly simplistic understanding of the request, so I'd like to elaborate on it so your Project Manager/Product Owner can be better informed for prioritising this piece of work.

WHY CLIENTS NEED THIS
During the Covid era, many of my clients are looking to diversify their offerings as funds dry up and the eLearning space becomes more competitive.  
As a result, many of them are looking at micro-credentials.  It ticks the boxes for a number of reasons, and from a Production perspective, this often means that a large course is created, then broken up into micro-courses.

In Storyline, you can publish an individual Scene, which means it's easy(er) to break the course up.  But for Rise, the combination of course file management, lack of section publishing, and inability to turn off the front page is a product-killer, and makes it very difficult for xAPI/SCORM packages without very serious workarounds. 

The production time/cost of creating multiple Rise Courses out of a single course is prohibitive, and frankly a pain...

As developers, we need an option for efficient production of micro-credentials with Rise so that clients can meet new emerging market opportunities (that's your User Story right there)

A WAY FORWARD?
Putting my Business Analyst Hat on, I suspect that the front page acts as a buffer for Apple devices (which block media if it's on the front page of a package and force a 'play' icon to appear).  The act of clicking 'Begin' meets Apple's requirements?  At least that's what I'm guessing.  So... the workaround that I use in Storyline all the time is to have a blank page, or a page with hidden objects that loads first, then automatically moves to the next slide... Not a play button prompt in sight!   

I'm not a coder, but I know that workarounds aren't ideal (tech-debt) and an appropriate solution needs to be found.  However, I hope that you'll see from this post that it's a strong emerging priority, and the current status of the Rise User Experience is not acceptable for Production or Deployment in the micro-credential learning space.

Thanks Crystal, and I look forwarding to hearing about this climbing onto the roadmap.

Will Findlay
3 years ago03/10/21 at 12:09 am (UTC)

It is puzzling why there doesn't seem to be more interest in making this available by Articulate. I've wondered if maybe Articulate intends Rise courses to always function as a whole or something. It just seems like something they don't want to do.

Having said that, I still hold out hope that it will be added as a feature. It would make Rise so much more useful to me. 

Jeremy Liles
3 years ago03/10/21 at 12:38 am (UTC)

I agree with Tim Danes' comments above, but there is also a more basic use case:

As a course owner who wants to publish interactive learning content in an LMS AND easily track learner progress, I want to be able to break Rise content into individual sections that are navigable and trackable within the LMS.

Monolithic Rise courses that are embedded within an LMS are a bad UX. From the learner's perspective, they typically enter a course called, say "Introduction to Product Management" and see one SCORM unit named "Introduction to Product Management" or "Course Content" or something like that, then they go into that SCORM unit, where they then see more navigation (huh, why are there 2 levels of navigation?). Of course I can break up the Rise content into a bunch of little rise courses, and I can even remove the extra navigation (which is now handled by the LMS), but the useless intro page remains.

It's as if I enter the front door of a house, and I immediately see another house inside with another front door. I enter the inner house, and I finally see rooms. I can break the inner house up into a bunch of little houses each with its own front door that can be entered separately, but I really just want to enter a house and see rooms.

I think Rise is failing to recognize or is willfully ignoring what should be the dominant use case within an LMS. It is actually pushing me toward abandoning Rise and figuring out other ways to achieve cross-platform interactive content, which is too bad.

Armando Pena
almost 3 years ago06/24/21 at 7:43 pm (UTC)

Sounds good. I'm sorry to bother you again but I try doing the HTML editing and its not working for me. I get to stuck between step 3 and 4. I create a new HTML on Textedit and add the link on the template that you gave butI think I am missing a step. Am I suppose to get rid of the last HTML link? or am I suppose to add both?

bdane@humtech.com Dane
almost 3 years ago06/28/21 at 2:37 pm (UTC)

Not entirely sure what you mean by "Am I suppose to get rid of the last HTML link".

In step 1 of my instructions, you should have copied something like "#/lessons/Iq00OobUZMAO9vGjpIWJ6mSgKfe8Q8kt" into your clipboard.  

After step 3, you will want to replace the "#/lessons/z2g1--QmkDuYmxI-yuMEc4BMbBwbJle6" in my example with your copied data in your clipboard, leaving that 7th line looking like this:
location='index_target.html#/lessons/Iq00OobUZMAO9vGjpIWJ6mSgKfe8Q8kt';

 

bdane@humtech.com Dane
over 2 years ago11/09/21 at 2:36 pm (UTC)

Here's my revised hack for exporting without a start page. I revised it after I realized that when you publish it to an LMS, the Rise content bookmarks the latest viewed page/block with a different hash in the URL, and my previous hack always overrode this. It's similar but takes a couple extra steps. For those who can't manipulate the code before being sent to the LMS folks, you're out of luck and at the mercy of the Articulate gods to save us.

  1. open your exported site and click on the "Start Course" button and in the address bar, copy everything after index.htm and save it for later (including the hash mark)
  2. rename the exported index.html file to index_target.html
  3. create a new index.html file with only the bare necessities:
    <!doctype html>
    <html>
    <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Rise Redirect</title>
    <script>
    preferredHash = '#/lessons/NQOrewsdLmW1234xri8bAXqBrluuBO07';
    if(window.location.hash) {
      vHash = window.location.hash;
      if(vHash.indexOf('/lesson') !== -1) {
        preferredHash = vHash;
      }
    }
    location='index_target.html' + preferredHash;
    </script>
    </head>
    <body>
    </body>
    </html>
  4. edit the javascript you just created to use the url string you copied earlier (keep the hashtag after ".html")
  5. Now open the index.htm file like you did before and the start screen is bypassed.
  6. But wait, there's more! The course title in the upper-left part of the menu is a hyperlink to the start page (bummer, right?). So do a search and replace of the \scormcontent\lib\main.bundle.js file like so:
    1. open the \scormcontent\lib\main.bundle.js file in Notepad++ (don't even try in regular notepad)
    2. search for: createElement(S.b,{to:"/",className:"overview-sidebar__title"
      Note: the variable names might change from course to course, so you might have to search for just: to:"/",className:"overview-sidebar__title" and make sure it's the only instance in the whole file.
    3. replace with createElement("div",{to:"/",className:"overview-sidebar__title"  (this makes it create a div instead of an A tag)
  7. And to further complicate things, when you're on the first actual page of the course/site and scroll up, there's a link to "Home" (AKA, the dreaded Start page) 
    1. Search for className:"previous-lesson__link",to:"/"
    2. Replace with className:"previous-lesson__link pleasehideme ",to:"/"
    3. Open the \scormcontent\lib\main.bundle.css file in Notepad++ (don't even try in regular notepad)
    4. add: a.pleasehideme{display:none !important}; to the very beginning of the css, so the css on line 7 will look something like:
      */a.pleasehideme{display:none !important};.clearfix:after{clear:both;display:block;...

There you go, that's what I'm currently doing.  I'm actually doing several other modifications to the files to make Rise look and behave like I want.

Tim Danes
over 2 years ago11/09/21 at 10:12 pm (UTC)

Great work Bill, and thanks so much for sharing.  I'll have to give this a go. 

It's such a pain that this is 'a thing' ... but I've nearly lost hope for Articulate fixing it.  Their backlog process is very opaque, so I'm not even sure the right people are hearing it.

However, I'll take the opportunity (again), to +1 the idea of having the option to remove the front page!

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