Hi All,
I've built a library to help us store question component user-selections and states. It will cover mcq, gmcq, slider, matching and some of textinput.
Let me know what you think, I'm planning on putting it in the adapt-contrib-spoor extension unless there is serious objection.
It is currently located at this github page with an example calculator so that you can see how many mcqs/sliders/matching of various sizes can be stored.
Kind Regards,
Ollie
Hi Super-Ollie,
Does this have the potential to store user selections from such graphical questions as a PPQ or a drag-and-drop? Thinking about any type of question where the selection might be based on coordinates top and left (two-item array?).
Chuck
Great work Ollie -
Can we check if we can save text input, drag n drops, essay type questions? If yes, then this should go in the core spoor extension. If not, we can add this as a separate extension over and above spoor. Do let me know your thoughts.
Regards,
Aniket
Hi Aniket,
This wasn't desgined for storing text I'm afraid. Scorn only has 4kb of space to store all the completion etc. A single text box has the capacity to consume that entire space 4k suspend data. Having said that, I believe Scorn 2004 has larger suspend data and when we get xapi/tin can in we will certainly be able to do essay type questions. This code is only meant to save the core components selections and states in the most efficient way but it still won't allow saving incorrect textinput as variable length strings are quite troublesome with such small space. Drap and drop questions will be fine.
Having it as a separate extension would work but it would be dependent on the spoor extension and wouldn't be standard adapt functionality without extending the set of core plugins. To include this.
Kind Regards,
Ollie.
The more I think about it the more storing text seems reasonable if certain versions of scorm can take more data. Let me have a chat with matt Leathes our resident scorn expert. We could probably do a staggered approach which allows text storage with the larger suspend data sizes... Leave it with me.
Sure! Do let me know the outcome of your discussion.
Regards,
Aniket
SCORM 2004 allows for 64000 bytes of data to be stored in cmi.suspend_data, so this gives you considerably more space to play with than the measly 4096 bytes available in SCORM 1.2
You also have other alternatives available such as using cmi.comments_from_learner - which is a field that is supposed to be to allow the course to 'collect comments from the learner about the learning experience' - but which is also rather handy for storing large chunks of text entered by the learner - as you can collect as many comments as you like with each being able to store up to 4000 characters of text.
Of course, we don't *officially* support SCORM 2004 ;-)
You could always have a LocalStorage/Cookie-based fall back for SCORM 1.2
Hi Aniket,
The results so far from my conversations:
In order to, using SCORM, store user supplied text on the LMS it is necessary to use SCORM 2004 with its larger suspend data size.
It seems that even though the SPOOR extension currently supports SCORM 2004, that SCORM 2004 has a different way of packaging the content and manifest, meaning that we might have to change the way the course builds in order to support 2004 (i can't verify this at the moment because I'm not familiar with LMSs or the SCORM 2004 protocol).
From Kineo's perspective it seems that few projects have a SCORM 2004 requirement. That client's rarely specify the exclusive use of SCORM 2004 and that at Kineo, if these requirements are included, the project is tailored specifically for the client. (So really low use-cases for SCORM 2004).
It seems SCORM 2004 isn't very well supported and that SCORM v1.2 is very widely supported. This lead to the conclusion that any effort to provide features that are unavailable in SCORM v1.2 should be invested in supporting xAPI/tincan rather than SCORM 2004 (again have no way of verifying those claims because I'm not familiar with LMSs).
It looks as though saving text/essay style questions is technically out of scope for SCORM v1.2 and therefore not currently possible in Adapt unless another solution can be found (which would probably include xAPI/tincan).
We could extend Adapt to store text if the community has large enough need for it, but I'm a bit worried about the effort it would require vs the reward if we went down the SCORM 2014 road.
I have heard also that localStorage / cookie can be used to store user text, but this would only be available to the device the text was stored on.
I hope that helps?
Ollie
Hey Ollie -
Thanks for the detailed explanation. Agreed we would need to leave the text input and essay type questions due to the 4K limit of SCORM 1.2.
We at Exult actually had added a additional code, using which we just save the mcqs/sliders/matching on SCORM and provide a additional pop-up which asks the learner to confirm if he would like to share it with his/her instructor. If he or she selects yet, we ask for the email address of the instructor and shoot the email with full records of mcqs/sliders/matching/text input/DnDs/Essay type question in HTML format. We also add the user's name in the email to make it easy for the instructor to identify the learner.
I know the above would not go in core, but surely as we do not support SCORM 2004 and SCORM 1.2 is even defacto for most of our clients I guess adding the features developed by you to the core would help.
Thanks for your efforts!
Cheers!
Aniket
That sounds like an awesome plugin. It shouldn't conflict with what I'm proposing here and nor will this hinder the use of your plugin, although it is a shame this feature won't be able to extend yours over many visits... That've been interesting. I'll make sure to put a switch to turn off the extra saving so that at least it remains consistent for your users and that to ensure that we still have the option to allow none of the question components to get saved rather than having a halfway experience.
Hi all,
I look forward to seeing this soon :)
As it's a core component, we'd ideally offer some kind of tracking for text input, but it's obviously not practical in a lot of cases. I'd like to see us at least have the option to be able to track these, as I'm sure a lot of people use them in a reasonable way, and aren't likely to require answers with many characters (or indeed have a lot of inputs per question).
So the first PRS are in for spoor, mcq, gmcq, slider and matching, textinput is to come.
Example at: https://rawgit.com/oliverfoster/spoor-extended/master/scorm_test_harness.html
Answer an mcq on the question components page or do the assessment. Refresh your page. Notice all the questions retain their states (other than textinput, cos I haven't done it yet).
There is a switch to turn this behaviour on (and off again).
Example at https://rawgit.com/oliverfoster/spoor-extended/master/scorm_test_harness.html has been updated to include the textinput fix. So all the questions components from core can now save / restore their user answers.
Pull Requests For Feature
Spoor: https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt-contrib-spoor/pull/71
MCQ: https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt-contrib-mcq/pull/100
GMCQ: https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt-contrib-gmcq/pull/72
Slider: https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt-contrib-slider/pull/70
Matching: https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt-contrib-matching/pull/68
TextInput: https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt-contrib-textInput/pull/56