Philly Download – My biggest takeaways from mLearning DevCon 2012

Philly Download – My biggest takeaways from mLearning DevCon 2012

I spent the better part of the past week in Philadelphia attending mLearning DevCon 2012 with Greg Gardner and Michael Sheyahshe.  Below is some of the great stuff I picked up on.  

Titanium Studio

Titanium Studio is  a free (depending on the licensing you chose) mobile development tool for creating content across multiple platforms – Very much like FlashBuilder.  My comparision is both a compliment and an insult.  It's complex, but then again a software package that publishes "native" apps to IOS, Android, Blackberry and WebOS was not going to be simple.  In addition to having a similar interface to FlashBuilder the code is very ActionScript like. So far it does not have the complexity of Sencha or the unfamiliar aspects of jQuery.  

I have been trying to get it up and running and have run into some snags. I contacted Jeff Batt of Rapid Intake who gave the presentation.  He provided a link from Lynda.com to help get me up and running.  I have only just started looking it over but seems like it will be a big help.

Before you can get to the tutorial though you will need to install.  That can be problematic.  There were a ton of updates to install before you could even get rolling.

Adobe Edge

Another cool tool I heard about at eLearningDevCon.  It's an HTML5 animation tool from Adobe that uses an interface a great deal like After Effects.  It does provide for interactivity, but just based on the whole timeline set up of the interface, it's an animation tool, not a heavy programming tool.  The best part is it's FREE! At least to try out.  I was able to pull up something at the conference about a licensing deal where if you signup now for the current version, that license will transfer over when a more official version come out.  Unfortunately I have not been able to navigate my way back.  All I can currently find is Edge available on Adobe's Creative Cloud.  You will need an Adobe ID to sign in.

Kwik 2

This is a cool plug-in for photoshop.  I don't see as much use for this but, I think it could be very useful for proof of concept and quick prototyping.  Kwik will turn a photoshop document into a mobile app, including events and gestures.  To me it's biggest strength is also it's biggest weakness - it's a PSD.  I think it's going to produce large files.  That said I have not had a chance to look at it very well.  You can get a free version that will support projects up to 6 pages.  Thanks to Orlando Rivera (http://digitalsummit.tv/) for cluing me in on this one.

http://www.kwiksher.com/news/introducing-kwik-2-beta/

Tin Can API

A more powerful, easier to use SCORM?  That's an idea I can get behind. This one might have the biggest implications but so far as I can tell it's also the most nebulous.  Tin Can API is the newest flavor of SCORM.  They did talk a lot about what it can do and the kind of things you can track now but both the keynote and the hands on sessions were light on "this is how you do it".  To me the idea of SCORM where you do not have to be connected to the LMS is pretty cool.  You can turn almost anything into something trackable.  Looks like they are using "activities" as the basis now.  I don't know how many action words they have set up but its based on things like learned, attended and that sort of thing.

I was able to learn a bit more about the API from the site but I am still digging into the details.

I also got my reeducation in mobile video courtesy of Nick Floro (http://nickfloro.com/). Biggest takeaway there?  That is was long overdue.

The low key conference was very interesting.  I learned a great deal .  Not so much actual techniques but just whats out there and tools I was not aware of.  Thanks so much to Jason Bickle, Rapid Intake, and all of the sponsors (including ICF) for putting on a very educational week.

Setting SCORM completion values in Lectora

I recently helped a colleague who was having problems getting a SCORM 1.2 course created with Lectora to be marked as completed on the LMS.  The colleague stated “Everything seems to work, but the course is not sending a "completed" signal to the LMS, which keeps the course "spinning" in an incomplete mode. The problem seems to be in how I ask the student to exit the course, which is set as an "on click" to exit the course and close the title. This action is not sending a message of complete to the LMS and I am wondering if there needs to be any additional conditions/variables set on the exit button. “

After several e-mails back and forth I realized that they had not ever instructed Lectora to send the “completed” message to the LMS.  They had mistakenly thought that be setting the course up to be SCORM 1.2 compliant nothing else needed to be done. Lectora has built in variables that will assist you greatly in sending the correct LMS messages but you still need to create the action in the appropriate spot in your course.

Additionally, a test had been created that needed to be passed in order to pass or complete the course. The test score to be passed to the LMS. Communication with the LMS message needed to happen in several spots.  I provided the following information for both SCORM 1.2 (and SCORM 2004 for future reference).   Notice that you can send different vocabulary values in the message based on what your LMS requires i.e. passed, failed, completed, or incomplete.  You need to work with your LMS administrator to see which exact vocabulary values must be used with the specific LMS. This particular instance required “passed” and “failed”.

The exam directs the user to different pages based on passing or failing the exam. Each of these pages then navigates to the last page of the course.

Because the test score was required to be sent to the LMS, following action needs to be on both the “passed” and “failed” test result pages.

Action Name: send score to AICC_Score

On: Show

Action: Modify Variable

Target: AICC_Score (a preset target)

Value: VAR(Test_Score)

Modification Type: Set Variable Contents

Then send the “lesson_status” of the course to the LMS.

SCORM 2004 course

1) Action Name: set lesson status

On: Show

Action: Modify Variable

Target: AICC_Lesson_Status (this is a system variable when your course was first set up as a SCORM course)

Value: passed (on passed page) or failed (on failed page).  

Modification Type: Set Variable Contents

SCORM 1.2 course

1) Action Name: set lesson status

On: Show

Action: Modify Variable

Target: AICC_Lesson_Status (this is a system variable when your course was first set up as a SCORM course)

Value: passed (on passed page) or failed (on failed page).  

Modification Type: Set Variable Contents

Finally, for a SCORM 2004 course add this action

Action Name: set completion status

On: Show

Action: Modify Variable

Target: CMI_Completion_Status (this is a system variable when your course was first set up as a SCORM course)

Value: passed or failed (or completed if that is what your LMS requires)

Modification Type: Set Variable Contents

The differences between SCORM 1.2 and 2004 are subtle but it is important to know what they are in order to be able to use either successfully.

Teaching an old dog new Lectora tricks

I recently completed a SCORM 1.2 based e-Learning project using Lectora Enterprise and a Saba LMS. The client wanted bookmarking and stipulated that cookies could not be used. Since we were loading this into an LMS the bookmarking was not an issue, we simply checked the "The published course will prompt to restore the last viewed location within the LMS." checkbox in the SCORM Options tab. Inside the SCO itself we tracked individual pages visited with variables. We then used these to place check marks next to internal Topics and Lessons completed within the SCO. The problem was when a student would complete a SCO and come back none of the internal topics and lessons would be marked as completed.

I knew that if I checked the "Retain variable value between sessions" check box for each variable I could track this using cookies. Since we could not do that, however, I was at an impasse. The Help Section states "Select this to retain the variable's value through subsequent launches of the published title. With this selected, if the variable value has changed, the next time the user launches the published title, the variable will load with the previously modified value." but it does not specify how this will be done except by the use of cookies.

I first looked at using SCORM 2004 and using objectives to track topic and lesson completion. While that would have worked it also created an environment where I needed to write a lot of JavaScript code. Knowing that this would entail a lot of testing and could not be truly re-usable with my other developers I re-visited my initial assumptions. None of my clients ever allow cookies so the "Retain variable value between sessions" check box for each variable has been strictly forbidden. I knew there had to be another use for the checkbox since I know I'm not the first developer to come across this.

I went ahead and checked the box, published as SCORM 1.2, loaded onto the SCORM Cloud. It worked as advertised with no cookies. Hmmmmmmm - how did it do that? Time to read the Debug logs. Evidently when you check the "Retain variable value between sessions" check box for each variable and publish to SCORM Lectora's SCORM code writes these variables to the cmi.susped_data object. This gets loaded back to the SCO from the LMS each time you open the SCO. Presto!! the variables retain their values.
I went to the Lectora Forum numerous times during this process to no avail. Unfortunately, I had my mind set on tracking objective not tracking simple variables. After I figured it out I went back to the Forum and searched on suspend_data there it was.

Moral of the story - don't get caught looking at a problem in only one way. Once I stepped back and re-visited options I had earlier thrown out, I found the answer.