Hi Fergus

Could you do as the error message asks and "Press 'OK' to view debug information"? If you can post that information here it should help to identify where things are going wrong.

It would also help to know what changes you made " to remove percentage scoring from my companies courses in favour of Complete/incomplete".

If you could let us know what version of the framework and what version of the spoor plugin this course is running that would help too, as well as knowing what LMS you are using.

If you try on a different LMS, for example SCORM Cloud or Moodle, do you get the same error?

Oops forgot to mention Totara LMS which also has the option to display a course in a way that doesn't use iframes or framesets.

It will still have the problem that you can get to the course if you have the course URL and are logged in. I will see what can be done about amending Adapt so that it comes to a complete halt in the event of a 'could not connect to LMS' error.

When you bypass the SCORM player, you should get a 'could not connect to LMS' error from the course...

We've been talking about amending Adapt so that it comes to a complete halt and doesn't load the course content if SCORM is enabled and it fails to find an LMS. That would obviously prevent the user from being able 'try out' assessments.

Hi Melissa

It's because your _advancedSettings object needs to be a child of the _spoor object. Currently it's a 'sibling' of it... I've amended your version and attached.

You should have been getting a 'could not connect to LMS' error from the course... I certainly did when I tested on SCORM Cloud... it was that which helped me track down the problem - the error prompted me to look in the browser console to see if there was a bit more information about what was going wrong and in there I saw the line "SCORM.API.find: SCORM version 1.2 was specified by user, but API cannot be found". Given that Adapt was still trying to track to SCORM 1.2 that meant that either the settings in config.json hadn't been applied properly or there was a bug in the code that reads them in and applies them.

Hi Paul

Sorry for the slow response.

xAPI could certainly be part of a solution for this - but not the whole solution. xAPI really just makes it easier to develop an application that can cope with the user only having occasional Internet connectivity.

We have been working on an xAPI plugin for Adapt, an 'early preview' is available here: https://github.com/LearningPool/adapt-xapi

You can also join in the chat about this over at https://gitter.im/adaptlearning/xAPI

xAPI tracks data to a Learning Record Store. Some learning management systems (e.g. SCORM Cloud) incorporate an LRS, but you can also run them completely separately.

Note that some SCORM LMSes (e.g. Saba, Cornerstone onDemand, Intuition) do already have apps that allow the user to do e-learning offline - but these are all custom to those particular LMSes... and additionally are not always easy to work with e.g. you build a course that works perfectly in Safari for iOS but when run in the vendor's app suddenly develops all sorts of problems (and they normally give you no way to debug like you can with Safari).

Good post on the function of LMS, Matt. Only thing I'd add is that the xAPI statement is one unit of measure for status update from a course. A course could carry a single statement and a ton of other information within that statement using the state document. I'm finding the state doc to be really useful in keeping traffic down. The downside is the state document isn't queryable. So it really depends an awful lot on what you need to do with the data. 

To the OP -

If you're getting into elearning, I'd caution against "rolling your own" solution to connect the front end with the back end. Anyone that's been around since the beginning of the industry remembers the pain caused by constant reinvention of the wheel by folks that wanted to do it themselves. This is the primary reason AICC and SCORM popped into the scene. Content wasn't portable and creating the interface between content front end and tracking back end takes a lot of work. This work does NOT scale well if you're adding a lot of content to a system and inevitably tuning it as you go. 

Specifications and standards ensure that a minimum number of features are available right out of the box. Implementing SCORM and even xAPI in your own HTML package is relatively trivial compared to the amount of design and development effort you'd need to produce to match the features available in the spec. 

SCORM does more than just track completion. It forms glue between the front and backend to handle tracking, state restore, capture of comments, capture of interactions (how questions are answered) and more. xAPI handles a more broad array of statement types that extend beyond the SCORM profile. 

SCORM is sandboxed. Meaning that an event <> person connection launched within the LMS cannot communicate (by spec) with another event <> person connection. One person launches a course. That course isn't aware of any other course. 

xAPI is relatively open. A statement can be queried from another experience and brought into a course, app, game, whatever. But it's up to you and you run the risk of building a bulk of data that is harder to manage and open to interpretation. 

LMS products can be expensive but they don't need to be. Take a look at http://moodle.org and http://www.learndash.com. Both of these offer different sets of features depending on what you want to do. Moodle supports SCORM 1.2. Learndash doesn't support SCORM but does support a connector to an LRS. http://www.nextsoftwaresolutions.com/grassblade-lrs-experience-api/ is relatively inexpensive and a bit easier to configure on most hosts than something like https://learninglocker.net/. If I were you, I'd get some experience implementing both SCORM and xAPI if you're looking to get into the industry. They are specifications that are common. You'll likely find that you'll like the cleanliness of the connections made between front / back end and the power you have to trigger built in events within your wrapper of choice. The https://github.com/adlnet/xAPIWrapper is pretty straightforward. For SCORM, I've had good luck with https://pipwerks.com/downloads/ wrapper. Using the stuff built into the tool is great. But there's plenty to learn from building a simple module from scratch and connecting with something like http://cloud.scorm.com or http://www.saltbox.com/, which are both free for development scale testing. 

Like anything else, looking in from the outside and saying "I could just use PPT for that, looks easy -- why do I need a tool. (silently announcing to the community you're asking for advice that you think they're fools for using custom tools and specifications)" are words you'll likely regret once you get into this work at any kind of scale.

Good luck. Embrace specifications and tools and you'll eventually have a good time with it. 

Hi Sam,

 

I think it's a good discussion point for everyone involved in Adapt to mention what they use or have experienced. Whilst working with Adapt for over 3 years now I've found nothing that works seamlessly (until now) from being in an LMS to accessing content and it's one of the reasons why Appitierre have built their own from the ground up based upon Adapt's philosophy of being pluggable, adaptive, responsive and easy to use. I work at Appitierre, but to try to be un-biased I'd like to comment on my experience with other LMS's and mention a new rumour of another LMS coming to the market.

 

Moodle: Moodle is great because it's free. It's not great because of it's user experience. It's configurations can sometimes seem backwards and completely not for a beginner. Free is great - when you need help a community member can help you out, if you need support it quickly becomes an expensive journey. Most of my clients who have come from a Moodle background and people I’ve spoken to a recent events have mentioned how they setup a Moodle but couldn't keep up with the support, maintenance, hosting and updates as they ran the install package off their hosting. They also complained heavily around the user experience and learners being lost.

 

If you're using Adapt content - it's important to remember that it doesn't support advanced tracking, responsive content has to be pushed into a new window (for me that loses the learners journey) and Moodle itself is not fully responsive (although I believe they are working on this).

 

I’m not against Moodle in anyway but it’s important to remember that there’s a few issues with content playing and support costs. Appitierre recently posted a blog post about the elephant in the room (developer costs around eLearning which you might like to read http://www.appitierre.com/blog/2015/07/30/the-adapt-learning-framework-and-the-elephant-in-the-room/ ).

 

Bloom: Bloom is a new LMS built by Appitierre. It was built with Adapt content in mind. Built fully responsive from the ground up and is capable of analysing advanced tracking data to help improve your courses for later/give a detail breakdown of how your learners are actually doing (instead of SCORM based data saying you’ve completed it). All Adapt plugins are able to store data and pass this back on load of a course meaning you can use some of Appitierre’s plugins below as well as the Open Source extensions:

 

"Book Shelf" - The ability to store Articles of content for later browsing or revision. Imagine storing a video or maths equation to watch/look at before an exam.

 

“Course Assessment” - A course wide assessment that enables any question in a course to count towards an assessment. This means not tying this to an Article and instead you’re able to analyse the learners journey with a built in analytics package.

 

“Notes” - Take notes during the course and retrieve them outside of Adapt in Bloom or during your course.

 

“Achievements” - Gamification elements baked into Adapt and Bloom enable you to engage the learner even further. Appitierre have points, stars, badges and lives, all are tracked across the whole system to create a coherent experience of gaining and achieving through learning.

 

“Assignments” - Enable the learner to upload/write an essay or long answer in Adapt without having to go back into the LMS. This has proven to be a valuable way of allowing learners more creative freedom from the standard yes/no, correct/incorrect feedback. Built into Bloom is a marking system that enables feedback and two way communication between Adapt and Bloom.

 

“Tags” - The start of filtered learning, tags enables learners, managers, teachers to gauge how a learner is doing based upon what types of content they answer correctly. This helps build profiles around the learner to know which types of content they like, what they know (competencies) and whether the current learning style is effective (maybe they like video or content based learning?). Appitierre are then able to adjust this for future reference.

 

Adapt is powerful and if you’re planning on using Adapt content exclusively (as it can take things like captivate videos) then Bloom is a good choice as it’s completely integrated with Adapt and it’s pluggable nature. If you have other content (tin-can/experience API or SCORM) then Bloom will also take this and present it in a responsive nature like other LMSs.

 

Bloom has a pluggable dashboard allowing flexibility by toggling a few JSON attributes. But the types of plugins you have are:

 

“My Communities” - A social platform for engaging your learners further through the use of posts, comments, likes, helpful tags and activities. Activities are special posts that enable the teacher/manager to set a task in a discussion and link courses and achievements - so when a course is completed it automatically gives the learners involved an achievement - imagine automatic certificates being handed out.

 

“Trails” - Learning paths with an end goal. Imagine setting a path for becoming a manager or web developer and seeing your staff/learners follow this path to achieve a final outcome.

 

“Timeline” - Enable course to be available at set times giving learners notifications when they are ending and starting to encourage learning/retention.

 

On a side note and if you want an integrated system with your LMS, content creator and content player then Appitierre also have an authoring tool to help with editing and importing straight into your LMS.

 

Totara:  Built upon Moodle - so you still have a few of the issues I’ve mentioned above. However the companies involved have done a great job in cleaning up the frontend themes of Moodle and have also implemented a responsive theme. Both Learning Pool and Kineo use this as their main LMS. I know from working with the Learning Pool and Kineo teams that they have cleaned up a lot of the issues above. Support will come from one of the Totara Partners here: https://www.totaralms.com/partners so you’ll be in good hands in terms of support/updates or customisations.

 

Cornerstone: From something that promises to be really good. I’ve found this system to be quite incompatible with Adapt content and takes a lot of fiddling with popups and javascript to get Adapt content working in a responsive manner. Unfortunately this needs a lot of support time not to mention the costs.

 

Now for the new LMS coming to the market soon:

 

If you’re using Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter or Adobe Connect - well guess who’s releasing an LMS? You can read the blog post here:

http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2015/08/lms-from-adobe.html

 

So to sum it up and trying hard to not be biased. I would contact the LMS providers you’re interested in and ask for a demo. Ask them if they support responsive, multi-device content (possibly give them a zip of Adapt content and get them to put it in their system to see how it runs). You probably know what features you want and I think it’s always important to make sure it’s easy for the learners accessing the system.

 

Too many times I see the buyers of LMSs get caught up in the features list and instead don’t care about the learning experience or how the user is going to access the content. The statistics imply that learners are starting to access content from their mobile devices on the go - so make sure that you’re future proofed and go with something that is responsive and ready for any device.

Hope this helps in some way.

Thanks,

Daryl

(Edited by Lucy Hodge - original submission Wednesday, 5 August 2015, 9:04 AM)