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Adobe Captivate: Captivate: Bookmarking, Lesson Status, Flash Cookies?

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    • CommentAuthorbfoye
    • CommentTimeSep 24th 2008
     
    Does anybody have any insights into how a Captivate module (running on an LMS as SCORM 1.2) handles bookmarking and lesson status? Is it done using Flash cookies? Can it be modified at all on a code level? Even when adjusting the settings in Captivate (i.e. "Never send resume data") it still seems to use Flash cookies for lesson_status and suspend_data. Is there any way to over-ride this, either in the support files in a Captivate package or by modifying the AS files buried in the Program Files directory of Captivate?

    Basically, what's happening is that a Captivate 3 module, published as SCORM 1.2, intermittently holds on to an incomplete status and we can not over-ride it. A learner will progress through one of the SCOs, reach the end, and be marked as incomplete. If they launch the SCO again it returns to a slide close to where they left off (generally at the last quiz question slide) and they can continue through to the end again. But after completing it they end up incomplete again. We then run the SCOs in our LMS' debug mode and see that when the user launches after being stuck in this incomplete state, Captivate is returning a lesson status of incomplete.

    I apologize for not being able to describe this more coherently. The error does not happen consistently, but just enough to make it almost a show-stopper. If anybody possible has any insights here I'd be glad to describe the condition in more detail or gather up some screen shots.
    • CommentAuthorphilip
    • CommentTimeSep 24th 2008
     
    Captivate doesn't really follow the rules with SCORM; it uses suspend_data instead of lesson_location for bookmarking.

    If you're resuming a SCORM course, Captivate checks the suspend_data for bookmark info.

    Captivate, like most Flash-based courses created by rapid development tools, is designed to work in a standalone mode as well as in SCORM or AICC mode. To support standalone mode, it uses a Shared Object ("Flash cookie"). When it needs to report something to the LMS, it connects via SCORM, but it will still use the Shared Object as a default storage mechanism.

    One issue you may encounter with Captivate in an LMS is course completions being changed from completed to incomplete. I know from experience that if you complete a course (LMS says "completed") then relaunch, it will be set to incomplete by the Captivate SWF. Is this what you're encountering, or does it simply never go to "completed"?

    If the latter, I wonder if your quiz preferences can be edited to fix the problem?

    And yes, you can edit Captivate's 'tracking' classes if you like, but be aware that this means anyone who works on your Captivate file will need to have the customized AS files added to their program files too. If not, you'll get unexpected results when publishing.
    • CommentAuthorbfoye
    • CommentTimeSep 24th 2008
     
    I've also consistently experienced the completion status reset (from completed to incomplete) upon relaunching previously completed Captivate content. That's a pretty annoying issue and if there's a workaround out there somewhere, that would be helpful.

    What's happening with this particular SCO is that when it's launched, the lesson_status is set to incomplete, and then there's a random chance that when you reach the last slide it's going to remain stuck as incomplete. Our LMS has a debug mode that exposes the SCORM traffic on each slide. When things are working as they should, I see the lesson_status change to "completed" on the last slide; when things are being buggy for whatever reason, it never changes. No matter how many times you retake the lesson, you'll be stuck in an incomplete status. (I’m inclined to blame this on the Flash cookies.)

    I tried disabling bookmarking and at first that seemed to help the problem, but after some widespread testing I think that just lessened its frequency (it was still possible to be stuck with an incomplete status even with bookmarking turned off).

    Maybe changing the quiz preferences is the way to go as you suggested. There are quiz questions in this SCO but they're not scored (and the maximum points to pass is set to 0); the module is set to report complete/incomplete only. Do you have any suggestions on how the quiz settings could be edited to elicit a more reliable completion status when the last slide is reached?

    Thanks for your help with this.
    • CommentAuthorphilip
    • CommentTimeSep 25th 2008
     
    Here are the settings I normally use (see attached screenshot). They work most of the time, but I don't think I've ever had a standalone Captivate-based course that didn't act up once in a while. :tongue: Nature of the beast I guess.
  5.  
    Hi,

    I use a single captivate swf as a lesson. The swf has navigation buttons. My problem is that when the user enters the swf the course marks it completed. I want the completed status to only come up if the user views the entire swf.

    What in Captivate tells the LMS that the lesson is complete? Is it in the htm file? Or does it have something to do with the SCORM settings?

    Anne
    • CommentAuthorphilip
    • CommentTime2 days ago
     
    Hi Anne

    I have the same problem. From what I've read, the issue lies in the SCORM communication between the SWF and the LMS.

    There are a number of workarounds on the internet; in my case searching with Google using the keywords "Captivate" and "SumTotal" returned a lot of hits, many of which contained workarounds (unfortunately none worked for me!).

    If I ever figure it out, I'll post a blog on my site about it.

    - philip

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