Content locking not working when you resume (even with Advanced Tracking on)

General Help
1

Hi there,

Hoping someone has come across this before… So here goes.

We have developed a course in Evolve, and the course has 5 Pages.

Inside each page we have a series of Articles, and components which are content locked using logic.

Articles are revealed based on variable changes. E.g. If a learner gets a question wrong, one article is revealed, if they get it right another is revealed.

Effectively articles are building in order as the learner progresses through the training in a guided order.

In our own testing and the client on Scorm cloud and their LMS, this works as expected.

When closing the course and returning, questions are greyed out and not re-submittable, however the learner can still navigate through the content. This is all to be expected.

In some edge case scenarios, which we cannot understand why, when a learner is returning to the course after partially completing and closing the course, the user is not able to progress and some articles do not appear. They are effectively now stuck and cannot progress.

We had an issue previously, where a user completed in order pages 1, 2, and then 3 (in logical order), and opened section 4, closed the module, and reopened. If they navigated back to any of the prior pages (e.g. 1, 2 or 3), the user became stuck. This was replicable every time. We turned on Advanced Tracking and all issues went away immediately.

So, the issue is still that for some users, the content is not re-unlocking so that they can continue after resuming the training. Even if a user says they don’t wish to continue when the course reloads, the interactions are still complete and they cannot progress.

So, any steer on why this might be happening for a select few users?

It’s published as:

  • SCORM 2004 3rd Ed

  • Advanced Tracking data turned on

  • Bookmarking extension enabled

  • Content locking extension enabled

Regards

Alan

2

Have you tried turning on local storage or triggering all the questions in the course to reset when ‘course loaded’?

3

I would guess it’s because the stored tracking data is in a state that prevents this from happening. It probably needs to be reset so that the learner is effectively starting the course anew*

I’m assuming this is in reference to the Bookmarking extension. It’s just asking the learner if they’d like to be returned back to the component they last completed. Selecting no/cancel does not reset/clear tracking data.

* I would recommend that anytime you make any sort of major functional change to a course it’s worth considering that the tracking data should be reset otherwise it’s all too easy to get into this sort of state. Most decent LMSs provide an option to reset stored tracking data when updating a course.

4

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your reply.

Understood that the bookmarking functionality simply allows the user to go back to start page or last visited spot. Thanks for clarifying that it doesn’t reset the questions.

In regards to this…

  • I would recommend that anytime you make any sort of major functional change to a course it’s worth considering that the tracking data should be reset otherwise it’s all too easy to get into this sort of state. Most decent LMSs provide an option to reset stored tracking data when updating a course.

Is you assumption here that the user has started the training, we have then uploaded a new version with changes?

The course is the same course we deployed, e.g. we haven’t modified it since it launched to learners. So any learners are starting the training, going through the training, closing, returning, and the course is then bugging out.

5

Thanks for your reply, we haven’t tried this, as local storage would only be applicable if on the same device id imagine? We have had users where this issue comes up, then they have tried on another device. The only way to resolve is to reset their training and get them to start again. For a 100,000 people rollout, it’s by far from ideal for both the learner or the administrators to manage. So far its happened on a sample of users.

Resetting the questions on reload would then mean the user has to take the whole course again would it not? All questions would return to blank? It’s a 30 minute course, so there is high likelihood that users will close and resume later.

The challenge we also have is that its hard to replicate, so turning on local storage, as an idea might be helpful, but we wont know if this resolves the issue completely or not. We’re trying to use the users devices that its happened on to see if we can replicate the behaviour. That way if we do, there is a chance we can then try changing some of the settings.

Really appreciate your thoughts :slight_smile:

6

Is there a hack we can do on the published code that when a user hits the bookmarking option on course reload that the course could be reset? Only when they say no. E.g. have a listener for the button press and trigger a full course reload.

7

Yes, apologies if I misunderstood.

Might be one to get in touch with Evolve support about but obviously if it’s not something they can replicate it might not be possible for them to help with.

8

No problem at all, appreciate your thinking cap. I have done exactly that :slight_smile:

9

local storage would only be applicable if on the same device id imagine?

Yep that’s right

Resetting the questions on reload would then mean the user has to take the whole course again would it not?

Not necessarily - it depends what your completion criteria are and how you choose to keep track of correct/incorrect answers.

For example, for each question you might set up triggers to increase a variable by one when each question is answered correctly. And an action to deactivate said trigger afterwards (so they don’t get counted twice upon reset). Then, set up a trigger to send a SCORM completion / SCORE based on this variable. Finally, a trigger to reset all the questions when the course loads.

Those returning users you described getting ‘stuck’ because of the question’s locked state could then answer the question again to fire the trigger you already have set up to unlock the next questions.

It’s obviously much more of a faff to do this all manually with logic but if you’re out of other options, it might be a workaround to resolve the specific challenge you described.