Persistent Cookie Behavior with Completed SCORMs on LMS

General Help
1

Hello! My team has encountered a strange persistent cookie behavior when testing our courses on LMS. We have 2 LMSs, one is Totara and the other is Moodle. We have a copy of this same particular course on both LMSs, but only the one on Totara is exhibiting the behavior.

When I complete the course using a learner account (a test account we have set up with all the access a typical user of our LMS would have), the SCORM records completion on Totara. When I close and reopen the SCORM, I choose the option “Start New Attempt” on Totara, which is supposed to reset my SCORM to zero completions; however, it opens with all items still showing as complete.

I have tried clearing browser cache and history without logging out, but the completion still shows.

I have tried manually deleting my prior attempt in Totara using my administrator account (resetting my completions to 0), then logging back in with my learner/tester account, but the SCORM opens with all items complete.

I tried logging in with a different learner account (we have several we use to test), and even though that account has never taken the course, the SCORM opens with all items complete!

Then I tried logging in with yet another user account, but also switching from Chrome to Edge as my browser, and still, the SCORM opened with all fields already completed!

The only combination any of my teammates and I have found to work is (1) Delete prior attempts using an administrative login, (2) log out as admin and clear my browser cache, (3) log back in as a learner account to re-attempt to take the SCORM. These steps must be done precisely in this order. If you clear cache while still logged in to any account on our LMS, the behavior persists.

Since I expect you to ask, when we publish to Moodle, I choose Course Package Format> Advanced>Export as SCORM, then version SCORM 1.2, and down below, the LMS statuses are Completed, Completed, and Auto. For Totara, I have now tried this setup, as well as Course Package Format> SCORM and then version SCORM 1.2. Neither one changed anything.

Could you give insight into why this is happening, and why it’s only Totara? I’m guessing there may be a combo of issues here, possibly coming in from both my publishing settings and some setting on the Totara LMS.

Since my team has hundreds of users who will be retaking courses annually, we’d like to figure out this issue before the next annual cycle hits! Thank you very much for your help.

2

If you’ve changed browser it’s definitely not a cookie or cache issue as things like cookies/local storage/cache etc are browser-specific. So even if you were using something like the Local Storage extension (which was my first thought) that wouldn’t have any effect if you’re switching to a different browser.

Honestly it sounds to me like it might be a bug in Totara - which is a bit odd since Totara is based on Moodle, but maybe they’re either not completely up-to-date with Moodle - or they’ve somehow managed to introduce this issue.

Unfortunately I can’t seem to find any free demo of Totara online so I can’t check this for myself.

3

Oh no! That’s not good, lol. Well, we just retested Adapt and Rise SCORMs, and so far, Evolve remains the only type having this issue. It’s still only on Totara. I’ll share this info with the IT team and see if they have any insights. We did an update on Totara recently (I’m not clear on whether this issue predated that update, though).

4

Unless you’re using the LocalStorage extension* then something like this is going to be controlled by the LMS - when you select ‘start new attempt’ it’s the LMS that handles ‘clearing’ the previous data before launching the course.

* And even if you were, as I mentioned previously, Local Storage is specific to each browser so Evolve wouldn’t be able to load any data from Local Storage if you switched browser. But - just to be certain - do check to see if you have the Local Storage extension enabled or not.