Tin Can/xAPI without LMS

Jan 06, 2020

Hello,

Our web team is trying to see how we can host Rise 360 modules that have been exported for Tin Can / xAPI without using an underlying LMS. According to the article available at https://articulate.com/support/article/Implementing-Tin-Can-API-to-Support-Articulate-Content it looks like this should be possible by including URL parameters at the end of the URL that users use to access the module.

Before posting this exported module to a server, the developer tried to test on his local machine by creating a simple webpage that links to the index.html file located within the exported module. This link includes the appended parameters, the module appears to launch correctly, and we can proceed through the learning activity without any visible errors. However, while monitoring through Chrome Developer Tools, we're not seeing any outgoing xAPI calls, which we assume would be made via JS/AJAX. To simplify the test, he also tried copying and pasting the example encoded URL from the article above, hoping that he would at least see 404 errors as the result of failed requests. We're still not seeing any web traffic.

The link we're using is as follows (and again, it's mostly copy and pasted from the article above), and the file in which it's located is in the same folder as the index.html file:

<a href="index.html?endpoint=http%3A%2F%2Fmy.lms.com%2Flrs%2Fendpoint%2F&auth=Basic OjFjMGY4NTYxNzUwOGI4YWY0NjFkNzU5MWUxMzE1ZGQ1&actor=%7B%22name%22%3A%20%5B%22First%20Last%22%5D%2C%20%22mbox%22%3A%20%5B%22mailto%3Afirstlast%40mycompany.com%22%5D%7D&activity_id=61XkSYC1ht2_course_id&registration=760e3480-ba55-4991-94b0-01820dbd23a2">Launch Module with Articulate Sample URL</a>

Are we missing a step? Could you offer any advice on how to get the exported module to start sending xAPI data?

2 Replies
Alyssa Gomez

Hi David,

Rise 360 LMS output (including TinCan/xAPI) will only communicate data when it is hosted in a learning management system. If you don't have access to an LMS, you can use a SCORM Cloud trial for free for up to 10 registrations per month.

I'll open the floor to the community to share their experience with hosting TinCan/xAPI output on a website. 

Jason Haag

Hi David,

You can actually host xAPI content anywhere. That's what makes xAPI the modern replacement for SCORM (it doesn't' require an LMS), but you do need a place to host it and you do need to send the xAPI data to an LRS. 

Veracity Learning (https://lrs.io) recently added hosting options to their LRS as well. So if you don't have an LMS and you also don't have a web server to host your content, this is a simple and affordable alternative. 

I recently posted a tutorial on how to use this feature (if you're interested): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWahlopyA3I