Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Articulate, Moodle, and SCORM

You've got Moodle and Articulate now you want them to talk to each other using SCORM.  One of the most common questions I see in forums, twitter, and blogs is how to use SCORM so that the results of eLearning courses developed with articulate can be tracked in the Moodle gradebook.  While it is a fairly simple process, many eLearning developers run into problems tracking scores for Articulate courses in Moodle.  All it takes is one wrong setting for your scores to not be tracked and there are a lot of SCORM settings to choose from in both programs. This blog post is an attempt at helping out eLearning developers having trouble using SCORM features in Articulate and Moodle.  I hope that the video and written instructions below help one of those many people encountering issues using SCORM with Articulate and Moodle.




How to use SCORM reporting with Articulate and Moodle:
The instructions below highlight some of the key points covered in the video.  For full details and a visual example please see the video above.
 Articulate Settings:
  • From within your Articulate Presenter project, access the "Publish" feature.
  • Select LMS as the publishing option
  • Click on the SCORM Reporting and Tracking button
  • Enter course description on "Reporting" tab (Optional)
  • Click on the "Tracking" tab and set the project to track slide views or a quiz score.
    • Slide views - Best used for Presenter projects that don't include a quizmaker or Learning Objects quiz.
    • Quiz score - Best used for Quizmaker and Presenter projects that include a Learning Objects quiz.
  • Click OK and Publish
  • After publishing, compress all of the published files into a compressed Zip folder
Moodle Settings:
  • From the Moodle course site in Editing Mode, add a "SCORM/AICC" Activity.  A common mistake is to use the "Link to file or web site" resource.
  • After selecting the "SCORM/AICC" activity, you will be able to upload the zipped folder of published articulate files.
  • After uploading the zipped folder, click the "Choose" option.
  • From here you will be able to adjust the rest of the settings to your liking.
  • Once you have all the settings adjusted you can go back to the course site and test your Articulate project.  After completing the project your grade should show up in the grade book on the course site.
Hope this helps out and let me know if you have any questions or alternative approaches to using Articulate, Moodle, and SCORM.

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17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Can you tell me how to get articulate essay questions responses to be submitted and displayed in Moodle
Thanks
Trish

Joe Deegan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe Deegan said...

Hi Trish,
Good question. Everything is the same as far as setting it up in Moodle. The only difference is how you look at the reports. I recorded a quick video explaining it at the link below. I also included a link to instructions for viewing these reports from moodle.org.

How to track Articulate essay responses in Moodle: http://screenr.com/fqK

Moodle.org instructions for viewing SCORM report:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/mod/scorm/report

Anonymous said...

Hey Joe,
I had a few questions about this topic. Is there a limited number of users that moodle can track? Also, when viewing the scores of those who have taken the course, is it possible to see who got what score? Thanks! -Sarah

Joe Deegan said...

Hello Commenter,
I have not heard of a limit of users that Moodle can track. I believe the only limitations would be server side and the amount of load it could handle at one time. How many users are you thinking?

Yes, you can definitely see who got what score. Each course site on moodle has a grade book feature which allows the teacher see students grades for each activity and allows students to see their own grades. Were you wondering about a certain type of eLearning activity in particular?

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Scott Hewitt said...

that is very helful....not that tricky as it appears but as you find with many things it just needs one wrong click!

Unknown said...

Hi Joe in relation to a couple of your posts I discovered something very interesting about how Articulate relates to Moodle. Specifically to the Review Mode function which will cause Moodle only to record your first score and not to record the highest scores of your SCORM object.

After racking our brains for 2 days we figured it out.

When publishing to LMS in articulate take care that in 'Reporting Tracking', 'In Report status to LMS' you choose Passed/Incomplete. If you choose Passed/Failed this will cause the Review Mode to be activated in Moodle and lots and lots of headaches from disgruntled students.

Anyway I hope this helps others who were experiencing a similar problem.

Regards
Brendan - Sydney, Australia

Joe Deegan said...

Brendan, thanks for the info. That is in a valuable nugget of info. I have also struggled trying to figure out how the "Passed/Failed" or "Passed/Incomplete" options effect SCORM reporting in Moodle. I still occasionally have a mystery situation where a few users out of many don't have their scores passed. This could be the cause. I'll stick to the "Passed/Incomplete" option like you suggested.

Unknown said...

I'm getting the same "mystery situation" where approximately 13% of user don't have their scores passed. Has anyone else had this problem? I've look everywhere did anyone find asolutions?

Unknown said...

I have been using Moodle for sometime now and I'm having an issue with articulate scores recording correctly. I see that for most students the scores record correctly, but there is always one or two for which it does not record or gives me incomplete data. I can't figure out what is causing it. It appears to be very random. It's never the same person or the same action that causes this. Any ideas?

Joe Deegan said...

Hi Jason,
I too have had the same problem and I am also stumped. I have also received this question from others so we aren't the only ones experiencing this problem. I found threads about this problem in the Moodle forum but no solution. The forum threads mention losing the connection between the SCORM package and Moodle as being the problem. I think you can basically relate it to the end user temporarily losing their internet connection while they are in the middle of the articulate tutorial. If their connection drops for a second it doesn't rebound and continue to track scores. If this is the case, I don't think there's much you can do from Articulate or Moodle other than making your tutorials very short.

Something I am trying to narrow down is if it happens when I am tracking quizmaker scores or only when I am tracking slide views. I think the problem mostly has to do with tracking slide views but I haven't put my finger on it since it is so inconsistent.

I'll be sure to post here if I find a solution and I hope you will do the same.

Anonymous said...

Can I just link articulate to moodle without using SCORM? I don't care about keeping scores. I merely want to upload by interactive presentation. I used to do this but I have forgotten how. Are there any CONCRETE directions?

Joe Deegan said...

Yes, you can just use the resource "Link to a file or website" to create a link to the published Articulate files. The link below will take you to instructions for linking to the published file. Hope this helps.

http://docs.moodle.org/en/File_or_website_link

Anonymous said...

Hi! I have a problem with Articulate Scorm file in Moodle. In preview Mod my lesson has not shown rightly. It shows from top and right deficient. I have changed window height and width when I add it but it doesn't fix...
Can you help me?

Brian Caudill said...

If you are looking to "wrap" Articulate content for Moodle take a look at JCA Solutions Simple SCORM Packager tool. It allows you to package together multiple Articulate modules (SCOS) into one course.
http://www.jcasolutions.com/ssp

aynechan said...

Hi Joe,

I'm new to Moodle and I came across your website. See, we are trying to put a SCORM element into Moodle that has two sidebars (one on each side) and we were wondering, is there a way to make the sidebars of Moodle show while the SCORM is in the content part? Cause I noticed in the video you shared that there is a sidebar when Articulate was played but it looked like a sidebar that Articulate had, and not the one from Moodle itself...

Joe Deegan said...

Hello aynechab,
I think what you are seeing is the Moodle table of contents bar which probably isn't what you are looking for. I can't think of a way to have a sidebar on the sides of a scorm player unless you did some heavy customizations to the theme. If you didn't care about SCORM tracking you could embed it in a normal html page and customize the page with sidebars. What kind of information did you want to display in the sidebars?