Which LMS works well with Rise on a phone?

Jul 21, 2017

Hello

We're developing some courses with Rise (which I love) and are doing some testing on LMSs. I'd like the course to be accessible on a phone and am wondering if anyone has had any luck getting Rise courses launched from an LMS to work well on a phone. 

I tried Blackboard (using SCORM 1.2), and from the mobile app when I try to launch the Rise module I just get a blank screen. Same thing when I try to launch using Safari or Chrome on an iPhone to just navigate to Bb (which is a painful experience by the way...).

I then tried Brightspace (Desire2Learn). I can get the Rise course to launch, but if I just upload directly Brightspace puts some kind of frame around the screen and I can't scroll. If I use the Advanced Upload, the course launches with a frame around it, but I have an option to go fullscreen by clicking an icon, and it works, although for some reason with this approach the Mobile Safari title and footer bars won't go away and some of the course navigation is covered up. It works better in Chrome for the iPhone. Unfortunately I can't find a way to have brightspace launch the module into fullscreen automatically, so it looks terrible at first.

So, has anyone had great luck with an LMS and Rise on a mobile device (especially a phone)? I've been really disappointed with these problems because I love the way my Rise courses look on the phone. Very frustrating that I can't find an LMS that hosts them well!

Thanks,
Dan Fletcher

22 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Dan,

Rise courses would work with any LMS that supports SCORM, AICC or Tin Can API. You'll want to follow the steps here to export your course for LMS and the setting required by your LMS. 

I'm not super familiar with Brightspace or Blackboard, but I know a few folks have run into issues when the course is launching in an LMS specific mobile app, and I'd recommend testing to make sure it's opening in the mobile browsers supported vs. the app. You can take a look at the supported browsers for Rise here. 

A good way to test is upload your LMS export to SCORM Cloud, an industry standard for LMS testing. This article will walk you through how to upload content there. 

Daniel Fletcher

Hi Ashley

Thanks for the reply. Sadly, as I said in my original post, my Rise course won't launch at all from the Blackboard Mobile app (just get a blank screen), which is a bummer, and unfortunately from a phone you have no option other than the Blackboard mobile app to access Blackboard sites. Definitely limits Rise's functionality in the education market from a phone perspective, but it does seem to work fine from Blackboard via the web browser. Hopefully some other folks out there have had success with launching Rise courses from other LMSs that are mobile friendly. Hope to hear from some folks!

Dan

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Thanks Dan, I wasn't aware that Blackboard restricted you to only launching mobile content from within their app. It's really good info for us to have. 

To experience the responsive content that Rise creates, it must be accessed by an application that fully supports the HTML5 standard.

We’ve listed the browsers here that support the HTML5 standard and display Rise as intended.

Are you able to share access with our team to that course in Blackboard? If so, can you reach out to our Support Engineers here. I'd love to have them take a look at the behavior. 

Dan Fletcher

Hi Louise:

I was never able to get it working on mobile in Blackboard. There's a new Blackboard mobile app that supposedly handles SCORM content better, but I've had no luck there either. The content doesn't launch.

I happened to start playing with Moodle last week, and although the web interface on mobile doesn't work well with Rise SCORM content as you noted, if you access the course through the Moodle mobile app on an iPhone or iPad, it works great. The responsive design works and it doesn't cover up the navigation like the web version does. I don't have an Android device so haven't tried it on the Moodle Android app, but I bet it works as well.

I do wish Articulate would invest a little effort here in seeing why there are issues with the responsive content on the major LMS platforms. The response to these questions always seems to be to test the content in SCORM Cloud and if it works there, then that's the best they can offer. It 's a bummer that this beautiful, responsive SCORM based content consistently doesn't seem to work within these major LMS platforms on mobile. Kind of defeats the purpose of Rise it seems.

Anyway, at least Moodle seems like a good option! Good luck!

Dan

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Thanks, Dan for sharing your experience here. Our team does have a few different LMSs we can test in (including an instance of Moodle). Since there are a number of different LMS options and versions within each option, our team does often use and recommend SCORM Cloud because it is a standard for LMS testing and deployment.

Our team is happy to work with you one on one to test any Articulate content and if you'd like to share a copy of your course, links to the content in your LMS and details about what's not behaving as you'd expect our Support Engineers are ready to dig in. 

For example, we've recently worked with SuccessFactors Support around issues with identifying the launch file to point to and to narrow down a bug that was fixed in an iOS update.

Let us know if you need anything else! 

Michael Thomas

This is very concerning.  Are there any LMS options out there that Articulate works well with (at full screen and mobile?

I'm researching this of a customer of mine.  They love the way Articulate looks and functions within the development environment and when packaged as a non-LMS HTML, however, they would LIKE the ability to track grades.  But even if they went with just the HTML5 route (no LMS), then there is no progress tracking for our users.   I'm sort of feeling lost here... can you recommend an LMS where Articulate appears to integrate seamlessly?  We don't really need many of the features of an LMS 

Tim Golden

No specific solutions but will just share our experience -  we had to abandon Rise and go back to Storyline for our modules.  Love the functionality of Rise and the look/feel of the modules, but our LMS (Learn Upon) would fail to record the module completion about 1% of the time.  It would get stuck 'in progress' in the LMS and any attempts to re-open the module just gave a white screen with no response.  We had these happen across every OS/browser/device combination you can think of.  Never able to  get a root cause identified (LMS and Rise pointing the finger at each other...not throwing stones just recounting events) so we had to move on to meet customer need.  I plan on coming back to Rise in the future and re-testing to see if we can take advantage of it.  The product continues to mature so i'm sure that will get hashed out at some point.  Good luck  :-)

We've had very few issues with Storyline working with the LMS, btw....

Allisun OConnell

I have the same issue with launching Rise courses on Workday Learning's Mobile app. I tested every SCORM output available and all fail to launch - it loads a blank screen. Very disappointed to see this is a common issue across mobile apps when one of the main features of Rise is supposed to be its mobile compatibility.

Crystal Horn

Hey Allisun.  Thanks so much for sharing your experience so far.  I'm really sorry you're struggling with compatibility between Rise output and the mobile app your LMS offers.

To experience the responsive content that Rise creates, it must be accessed by an application that fully supports the HTML5 standard.  The beauty of Rise output is that it's inherently responsive on most every mobile device browser.

While it's challenging to design output that can communicate with custom apps created by a variety learning management systems, I'm happy you've got a conversation going with our support engineers.  Your case was escalated to our senior staff who'll weigh in next!  I'll follow along with the case as well.

Eboni DuBose

We are using Rise course and Rise course w/Storyline interactions

We are testing the LMS right now on Mobile and surprisingly Workday is working fine on mobile phones.  The major problem we are having is losing learner progress every time the scorm package is updated (there is no upload same version option).  

2) When a learner completes a course, it eliminates their progress if they decide to come back to the course.  They have to start over at the beginning. We've had to open our navigation to circumvent this

 

Allison LaMotte

Hi Eboni,

Did you try uploading your course to SCORM Cloud to see if you experience the same behavior?

That's what we generally recommend doing to determine whether the problem stems from the course or the LMS. Here's an article that walks you through how to do that.

If it works correctly on SCORM Cloud, then the problem is coming from the LMS and you'll need to talk to your provider.

If you see the same issue on SCORM Cloud, then the problem is likely coming from the course itself. If that's the case, please reach out to our support team.

Bill Kemsley

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your input. I am using LearnDash on a WordPress site. How were you able to track student data of a Rise course in LearnDash? Did you use a paid 3rd party add-on, such as the Tin Canny add-on by Uncanny Owl? Or is there some other way to track Rise data in LearnDash?

Thanks for your help,

Bill

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