How to Troubleshoot Your LMS with SCORM Cloud
If you’re like many e-learning developers, your LMS has prompted numerous head-scratching (or head-banging) moments. Perhaps your course won’t play or resume in your LMS, or it isn’t tracking properly. Job number one: identify the problem. And to do that, we recommend a handy tool called SCORM Cloud. SCORM Cloud is an industry-standard testing engine developed by Rustici Software, an organization that knows a lot about SCORM and helped develop its successor (xAPI/Tin Can API). It supports all LMS specs—AICC, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, xAPI, and cmi5—and it’s free, making it an ideal LMS troubleshooting superhero. (You can create an account here.) In this article, we’ll show you how to use SCORM Cloud to test your project, from zipping your content to verifying tracking. Here we go! Step 1: Zip Your Content First, publish your course for LMS and create a zipped file of the published output. If you’re using Storyline 360, Presenter 360, Quizmaker 360, or Engage 360, you can do this by clicking on the Zip button in the Publish Successful window. If you’re using Rise 360, export your Rise 360 course as a cmi5, xAPI, SCORM, or AICC package and save it to your computer. If you’re testing AICC content, see this article for special instructions. Step 2: Upload Your Published Output Log in to SCORM Cloud, then click Add Content and select Import a SCORM, AICC, xAPI, or cmi5 package. Then click Browse, find your Zip file, and click Open. Finally, click on Import Course. SCORM Cloud will upload your course and take you to the course home page. Step 3: Create an Invitation It’s possible to launch your course directly from the course home page, but opening it that way doesn’t mimic a true learner experience and results won’t show in LMS reports. That’s why we recommend clicking Share and then Invite. That will open up another window. Here, click on Create Invitation. This will generate an unguessable URL that you can use yourself or share with others. For an extra layer of security, you could also choose the Private Invitation option. Step 4: Test Your Course Copy the URL into the address bar of a new browser window. Enter your email address and name. Your results will be tracked under these credentials. Then, click on Ok. Now take me to my training. At this point, test your course and attempt to reproduce the problems that prevented it from behaving as expected in your LMS. Watch for display problems of any kind, make sure your content suspends and resumes as you’d expect, and keep an eye out for unexpected behavior in general. When you’re done testing, exit the course and confirm that your score and status are displayed correctly. Step 5: Verify Tracking Now that you’ve tested your course as a learner would experience it, you can review the SCORM Cloud reports for accuracy. To do so, return to the course details page, click Reportage, then drill down into the available reporting data. Tip: If your course details page is no longer open, just return to your course library and click the course name. What’s Next? If your course works properly in SCORM Cloud but not in your LMS, open a support case with your LMS provider to troubleshoot the issue. They’ll know how best to help with LMS-specific problems. If your Articulate content doesn’t play, resume, or track correctly in SCORM Cloud, submit a case to our support team so we can take a closer look. Be sure to include a copy of your project file so we can try to reproduce the problem. Need more help troubleshooting? Check out these other resources: The Secret to LMS Debugging Learning More About Your LMS: Suspend Data and Resume Behavior If you have any other troubleshooting suggestions, share your thoughts with us and other community members in the comments below. And if you’re tired of spending time troubleshooting your LMS, try Reach 360. Our frictionless LMS is integrated with Articulate 360 apps, so you can publish directly and be confident that everything will work as expected. It’s fast and hassle-free!A Quick Introduction to SCORM
SCORM is one of those e-learning terms you probably hear all the time. But you may not know that it’s an acronym for the Sharable Content Object Reference Model—and yep, that’s a mouthful! Here’s what you need to know about it. SCORM is a standard for making sure e-learning courses and learning management systems (LMSs) can communicate with each other. It includes a set of technical specifications that ensure e-learning courses can report information to an LMS, relaying whether the learner completed the course, how they did on a quiz, and so on. Basically, if authoring software can export content that’s SCORM-compatible, you’ll be able to use it in a SCORM-compatible LMS. Originally sponsored by the Department of Defense to make sure different e-learning courses created by various developers would work on all their LMS platforms, SCORM quickly became the software standard for the whole industry. But it’s not the only one out there. AICC and TinCan (also known as xAPI) are other standards widely used in the e-learning industry. Creating SCORM-Compatible Content with Articulate Software If you use Articulate authoring tools, it’s simple to publish courses to conform with the SCORM standard. You can find those details here: Storyline 360 User Guide Tips Storyline 3 User Guide Tips Rise 360 FAQs Studio 360 User Guide Tips And we’ve got tons more resources on working with LMSs to help you master this terminology: Find more details on making sure your Articulate courses will work with your LMS in this guide. See how you can troubleshoot LMS issues with SCORM Cloud. And find out even more about LMSs in this detailed series. If your current LMS is clunky, hard to use, or difficult for learners to access, then check out Reach 360 from Articulate. This fast, flexible, frictionless LMS simplifies every part of getting great training out to the people who need it. And because you can publish your courses to it directly from Rise 360 and Storyline 360, it takes no extra work at all to ensure your course and Reach 360 communicate with each other perfectly.A Quick Introduction to LMS and LRS Standards
There are a few common reasons why folx go looking for information on Learning Management System (LMS) or Learning Record Store (LRS) standards. If you’re one of them, maybe you’re doing your due diligence to make sure your course will work with a specific LMS or LRS. Or maybe you’ve come across some cryptic references to e-learning standards (cmi5 is what exactly?) and want an easy-to-understand explanation. No matter what brought you here, you’re in the right place. This article is all about giving you the plainspoken lowdown on LMS/LRS standards and why they’re important. Along the way we’ll unpack a few acronyms (specifically, AICC, SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5) and give you a little history lesson, too. Ready? Let’s get to it! What are LMS/LRS standards and why do we need them? Organizations use LMSs and LRSs mainly to track learner data like course completions and quiz scores. As you can imagine, there are lots of different ways to share data between digital systems. Without an agreed-upon process, your course could end up sharing data in a way that your LMS or LRS can’t understand. This is where LMS/LRS standards come in. Each standard (AICC, SCORM, xAPI, cmi5) is essentially a shared language for communicating with an LMS or LRS. Having standards ensures that, no matter the authoring app or LMS/LRS you’re using, information can be shared without any fuss or complicated coding. If you’re using an LMS that’s integrated with your authoring app—like Reach 360 is with Storyline 360 and Rise 360—you don’t have to worry about these standards because your course files and LMS all work together automatically. And if you have an Articulate 360 subscription, don’t forget that it now includes the Reach 360 Starter plan, so you can use it to share training with up to 300 learners a year at no additional cost! However, if you’re using an LMS/LRS that isn't integrated with your authoring app, you need to know which standard to publish to. In the world of e-learning, there are four common standards: AICC, SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5. Let’s take a closer look at each one. AICC The oldest e-learning standard, AICC (which stands for Aviation Industry Computer-based Training Committee), was created in 1988 to ensure that aviation training could be designed, delivered, and evaluated across various computer-based training platforms. Eventually, the specs in the AICC standard became popular outside the aviation industry. The AICC dissolved in 2014 due to declining membership and the rise of other e-learning standards. Although the AICC standard is no longer evolving, it’s still fairly common for authoring apps and hosting platforms to be AICC-compliant. Many organizations have useful legacy training content that was originally published as AICC, so they look for LMS platforms that allow them to host that content and authoring apps that allow them to maintain that content. Before the AICC dissolved, the committee started working on a new standard called cmi5, which I’ll highlight in just a bit. SCORM SCORM, which stands for Shareable Content Object Reference Model, was released in 2001. Despite its age, it’s still an industry standard that defines how to package course content so that LMSs can recognize it and extract information about learner activity. The SCORM standard in all its iterations has proven to be a catalyst for broad adoption of e-learning. However, as we saw with AICC, standards need to continuously evolve to meet the ever-changing landscape of modern technology—like cloud computing and mobile devices. While SCORM specifies how courses and LMSs should communicate, it does so in ways that are a bit out of date. Another common complaint about SCORM is that it only tracks a limited amount of information about learner activity—like completion, scoring, and quiz interactions. If authors want to track more detailed information about the learner experience—like which links learners clicked or if they tend to get stuck in a specific part of the course—they can’t. Ultimately, these limitations gave rise to the creation of xAPI. Learn more: A Quick Introduction to SCORM xAPI When xAPI came out in 2013, it was billed by many as a replacement for SCORM. Unlike SCORM, which only tracks how learners interact with courses on an LMS, xAPI tracks a broader array of learning activities and experiences across a wide variety of platforms—from mobile apps, video games, and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality training simulators to enterprise systems like talent management and help desk applications—using an LRS. In theory, this allows e-learning pros to track almost anything, anywhere, opening up tons of possibilities for gathering and analyzing more meaningful and performance-oriented data. However, in practice it can be complicated to implement, since you have to manually define everything you want to track and how. Not to mention that very few systems outside of the Learning and Development (L&D) industry have adopted this standard or are even aware of it, so the tracking possibilities aren’t quite as extensive as you might think. Learn more: An Introduction to xAPI cmi5 Although cmi5 sounds like the name of a Star Wars droid or a top-secret espionage organization, it’s far less exotic. Cmi5 is the most recent e-learning standard, released by ADL after the AICC dissolved. To create cmi5, they basically took xAPI and added rules specific to e-learning content to make it easier for course authors to set up. In short, like xAPI, cmi5 tracks and records learning experiences wherever and whenever they happen—course creators just don’t have to do as much mental gymnastics to get it to work. For this reason, many e-learning pros tout it as the preferred option for tracking, calling it the best of both worlds. More Learning Does all of this sound like an L&D version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? If AICC is out of date, SCORM is too constrained, and xAPI lacks definition, does that mean the cmi5 standard is just right? In case your head is spinning, here’s a table that recaps the basic use cases for each of the four standards: Standard LMS or LRS? Use Case AICC LMS Legacy e-learning courses with basic tracking needs like completion, scoring, and quiz interactions. SCORM LMS E-learning courses that don’t require tracking beyond completion, scoring, and quiz interactions. xAPI LMS and LRS Learning experiences that extend beyond e-learning courses and require highly detailed, customized tracking—via an LRS. Note that xAPI was designed to record general experiences, with a light focus on e-learning content. cmi5 LMS Learning experiences that extend beyond e-learning courses and require highly detailed, customized tracking—via an LMS. Note that cmi5 includes special functions specifically tailored to e-learning content. I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in knowing that our industry has a rich history of evolving standards. For almost thirty years, L&D folks have been working hard to create and iterate standards that give practitioners the tools they need to help their orgs keep pace with today’s learners. Want to learn more about the hosting platforms that use these standards? Here are a few resources to check out: All About Learning Management Systems (LMSs) An Introduction to LRSsLearning More About Your LMS: Resume Behavior and Suspend Data
Have you ever run into a situation where your course doesn’t pick up where you left off when you view it more than once on your LMS? Or maybe it does, but you’d prefer it start over from the beginning? The way your course responds when it’s relaunched is called the resume behavior. If your course isn’t resuming as desired, you’re probably wondering what’s going on and how to fix it. In this article, we’ll help you figure that out. How Do I Control the Resume Behavior? First, let’s examine our options. If you’re using Storyline 360, Presenter 360, Quizmaker 360, or Engage 360, you can choose from three resume options: Prompt to resume If learners previously viewed part of the course, this option displays a prompt, asking learners if they want to pick up where they left off. Always resume This forces your course to open at the place where learners left off. They won’t see a prompt; it just happens automatically. Never resume This forces your course to always open at the beginning, even if learners completed part of the course previously. They won’t see a prompt. If you’re using Rise 360, the course will always resume from where the learner left off. How Does Resume Actually Work? As a learner makes his way through a course, a compressed chunk of information—called suspend data—is sent to the LMS after each slide. This suspend data describes everything about the current state of the course, including the learner’s responses, navigation history, object states, variable values, interaction results, and more. When the learner opens the course again, it asks the LMS where they previously left off. The LMS sends the suspend data back to the course, and the course uses it to resume at the same point and in the same state as before. Why Do Courses Fail to Resume? A few things could get in the way of the resume communication process: You exceeded the suspend data limit. Your LMS might be imposing limits on suspend data. Older LMS specs, such as SCORM 1.2, have outdated restrictions on suspend data. We recommend publishing for the latest edition of SCORM 2004, xAPI (Tin Can API), or cmi5. See these articles for more information: Storyline 360 Rise 360 Studio 360 You’re in a cross-domain environment. If you’re hosting AICC content on a different server than your LMS, you may experience a cross-domain conflict. See this article for solutions. (Note that this doesn’t apply to Rise 360 courses.) You already completed the course. The resume feature might not work as you’d expect after you meet the completion requirement. Most LMSs consider a course to be in review mode after the tracking requirement has been met. In review mode, resume data is no longer sent to the LMS, which prevents learners from accidentally changing their course status from Complete back to Incomplete. See this article for more information. (Note that this doesn’t apply to Rise 360 courses.) Can I Examine Suspend Data? Enable LMS debug mode to watch your suspend data flow back and forth between your content and your LMS. By doing so, you can verify that the data returned by your LMS upon resume is the same data that your content sent upon suspend—a common point of failure. To help you avoid exceeding suspend data limits (see above), we compress suspend data. As a result, the suspend_data string in an LMS debug log isn’t human-readable. You won’t be able to decipher what it means, but you can see if the data sent to the LMS matches the data that comes back from the LMS. Doesn’t My LMS Need to Read Suspend Data? No. Only the course itself needs to be able to decompress and read suspend data. The LMS just functions as a handy place to store suspend data between attempts. The Bottom Line Now that you have a better understanding of how resume behavior works, you should be able to troubleshoot these issues more easily if you run into them. Need more help troubleshooting? Check out these other resources: How to Troubleshoot Your LMS with SCORM Cloud The Secret to LMS DebuggingThe Secret to LMS Debugging
Unraveling the chatter between your learning management system (LMS) and the content you’ve produced in your authoring app can be frustrating. What should you do when learners do one thing but the LMS says they’ve done something else? How do you handle it when the score or status isn’t recorded as you’d expect or when the course doesn’t suspend or resume the way you’d like? An important first step is to test your project in SCORM Cloud, but what should you do when your course works properly in SCORM Cloud but not in your LMS? That’s where LMS debug mode comes in! It’s an easy way to see exactly what your AICC, SCORM, or cmi5 content is sending to the LMS and how the LMS is responding. By default, LMS debug mode is disabled in your published output, but it’s easy to turn on. In this article, we’ll walk you through that process step by step. If you prefer, you can watch this video instead: Step 1: Locate Your Published scormdriver.js File First, publish your course in cmi5, SCORM, or AICC format (this debug process does not work for xAPI/Tin Can API). If you’re using Storyline 360, Presenter 360, Quizmaker 360, or Engage 360, the next thing you’ll do is click Open in the publish success window. From there, double-click on the lms folder. If you’re using Rise 360, export your Rise 360 course as a cmi5, SCORM, or AICC package and save it to your computer. From there, extract the zip file containing your course and open the scormdriver folder. From there, no matter which app you’re using, you’ll want to find the scormdriver.js file. Step 2: Enable Debug Mode Open the scormdriver.js file in a text editor, such as Notepad, and locate the following line: var SHOW_DEBUG_ON_LAUNCH = false; Replace the word false with the word true, as shown in the screenshot below: Then, save and close the scormdriver.js file. Step 3: Zip Your Content and Upload It to Your LMS Next you’ll need to zip your file so you can upload it to your LMS. If you created your course in Storyline 360, Presenter 360, Quizmaker 360, or Engage 360, simply go back to the publish success window and click the Zip button. This creates a zipped file of the published output in the same location where you published your course. If you created your course in Rise 360, you’ll need to do this manually. To do that, go back to the top-level folder of the published output and zip the files. Make sure not to zip the folder that contains your course, just the course files. Once you’ve zipped your file, upload it to your LMS. Step 4: Launch Your Course and Save the Debug Log When you launch the content in your LMS, it’ll open in one window, and the debug log will open in another. After reproducing the issue you’re troubleshooting, copy and paste the text from the debug window into a document for further investigation. Step 5: Review the Debug Log Your LMS provider is most qualified to interpret the contents of your debug log, so we recommend opening a support case with them. However, if you’re familiar with AICC, SCORM, or cmi5, feel free to take a look at the log. Sometimes an issue is obvious and jumps off the page. If neither you nor your LMS provider is able to spot the cause of the problem, submit a case to our support team and we’ll take a look. Be sure to include a copy of your project file so we can try to reproduce the problem. Need more help troubleshooting your LMS? Check out these other resources: How to Troubleshoot Your LMS with SCORM Cloud Learning More About Your LMS: Suspend Data and Resume Behavior Want to avoid the hassle of course and LMS miscommunications? Try out Reach 360—our frictionless LMS. It’s integrated with Articulate 360 apps, so you can publish directly and be confident that everything will work as expected. It’s fast and hassle-free!Getting Started With Microlearning—6 Common Questions Answered
Microlearning is a buzzed-about approach that even people outside the learning and development field might have heard of. But for all that talk, it’s not always clear what this term really means. If you’re looking for some answers, we’ve got them! That said, you might want to grab a snack beforehand, because when it comes to understanding microlearning, some of the best analogies involve food. 1. What exactly is microlearning? Think of your typical robust e-learning course as a hearty meal. It’s got a lot of different things to offer, and if you’re famished, it’s likely just what you’re looking for. But it also takes a lot of time to prepare and eat. And if you’re just a little peckish, it could be way more food than you actually want. Microlearning, on the other hand, is like a simple snack. It’s focused on just one item you can take it in quickly, and if you just need a nibble, it hits the spot. And as with a snack, you can combine multiple microlearning courses to make something more substantial—think tapas for learning. When people need to make online training, they often gravitate to the full-meal style for courses. And there is a time and place for that approach. But often your learners just need a little learning snack that quickly solves a problem and is easy to fit into a busy workday. That’s where microlearning comes in! 2. Is microlearning just training that’s short? Being bite-size is just part of the recipe. That’s because being short doesn’t automatically equal a good learning experience. Think about taking a one-hour video lecture and cutting it into twelve five-minute chunks. It’s going to be awkward to watch because it wasn’t designed to be viewed in small segments. And it’s still going to take an hour to get through. Good microlearning, on the other hand, is purposefully designed around the strengths and weaknesses of a short format. It breaks information or skill-building content into small, easy-to-consume bits, typically with each one laser-focused on achieving a single learning objective. With microlearning, creators refine the content to only what someone needs to cover that objective—nothing more, nothing less. To double down on efficiency, designers also focus on paring down copy as much as possible without losing clarity, and using multimedia and interactions when they’re the faster or clearer way to explain something. 3. What makes it effective? When it comes to learning, microlearning has lots of things going for it. The short length makes it feel approachable: When you give learners focused, easily consumable bites of content instead of a thousand-slide mega-course, getting through the content feels achievable instead of overwhelming. Being bite-size also makes it bingeable: Have you ever sat down to nibble on a few chips and then accidentally eaten half the bag? It’s easy to lose track of how much you’re consuming when you’re taking it in in small bites. While that’s sometimes annoying when you’re snacking, it can be a big plus when it comes to learning. Since well-designed microlearning content is easy to ingest, learners might inadvertently binge more content than they would have in longer courses. It respects learners’ time: Professional development is important, but often difficult for people to fit into a busy schedule. So providing a streamlined version of the content they need without any filler or bloat is a powerful way to make learners feel you respect their workload. It’s easy to use in the moment: Splitting up learning into smaller, more targeted chunks makes it easier for learners to find exactly what they’re looking for in their moment of need. Learners can log on, find information quickly, and immediately apply it on the job. 4. How short does my microlearning need to be? While you might see numbers like “under ten minutes” or “under five minutes” floated around, there’s actually no agreed-upon standard for how short something has to be to count as microlearning. That ambiguity is one thing creators can find frustrating with the concept of microlearning. It also means team members and stakeholders might not realize they’re all working off of different definitions. Instead of focusing on time, a better guideline is to have each microlearning experience you create focus on a single, targeted learning objective. That will naturally guide your content toward being bite-size. 5. If it works so well, should I always use microlearning? Microlearning is useful for a lot of situations. But no single format works best in every situation. Microlearning can be a good fit if the information makes sense in small segments and it’s easy to see ways to break your content down into chunks. For instance, this approach would work well if you needed to teach people how to put together a few quick party snacks. But if the topic needs a longer, deeper dive to explain, separating that content into short pieces will make it harder for learners to wrap their heads around. Think of trying to teach an in-depth course on French cooking. Most dishes are complex enough that a short lesson wouldn’t get the job done. And even if you could make that work, the breadth of the course topic would lead to an almost unmanageable number of mini-lessons. In that case, it’s easier to give learners longer-form lessons that cover each dish from start to finish. 6. Do I need to use a specific medium or app to create microlearning? Not at all! You can use whatever medium—or mix of mediums—works best for your content and learners. And there’s no special app you need to buy to make something micro either. That said, with the popularity of short-form content, some apps have added functionality to make it easier to create—like the new Microlearning feature in Rise 360. So keep an eye out for how your tools can help speed up microlearning design and development. Wrap-Up Microlearning is a buzzy term. But once you get past the hype, it’s easy to see situations this approach is well suited for. Want more ideas for how to use microlearning in the real world? Check out these tips and examples: 3 Tips for Creating Effective Microlearning Courses 4 Advantages of Microlearning (With Customizable Examples!) 8 Business Use Cases for Microlearning Rise 360: Interactive Microlearning Infographic Rise 360: Illustrated Landlord Pet Guidelines Rise 360: Food Industry Microlearning Have an additional example of microlearning that you think works particularly well? Be sure to share it in the comments. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.7 Ways to Enroll Learners in Online Training with Reach 360
Reach 360 is a premium add-on to Articulate 360 you can use to easily share training content with external and hard-to-reach learners. One of the nice things about it is that you’re not limited to one enrollment method. You can use what works best for you—including letting learners register themselves! Let’s walk through the different options together. 1. Share a Link and Let Learners Self-Register Self-registration is great for times when you want a large group of people to have access to your training content but don’t want to sign them up one by one. It’s super easy to do with Reach 360. You just need to enable self-registration and share the link with your learners. Once they’ve signed up, these learners have access to everything that you’ve published to your default library. Such a timesaver! 2. Automatically Add Self-Registered Users to Groups What if you like the idea of self-enrollment but want to assign specific content to learners? That’s where the group-level self-registration feature comes in. Say you have a group of new hires who have to take onboarding training like safety procedures and human resources (HR)-mandated training. Simply create a “New Hires” group, assign training to that group, and create a self-registration link. When learners self-register using that link, they’ll automatically be added to the New Hires group and enrolled in all the relevant training. They’ll also be able to view any other content you make available to them in your training library. 3. Enroll Learners and Groups Manually Self-registration is great for new learners. But if you want to enroll learners already in your organization, or members of your Articulate 360 team, you’ll have to do it manually. You have two options for manual enrollment: Enroll learners individually—This option makes the most sense when you only need to enroll a few people—or if you need to enroll people with vastly different training needs. Enroll groups of learners—This option is an excellent way to save time if you have multiple people who need to access the same training content. For example, if you have multiple learners who report to Maria in Sales, you can create a “Maria’s Team” group. Then, when you create training on the quarterly numbers for the southern region, you can easily enroll her whole team at once from the Groups tab. And if you add a new person to an existing group, they’ll automatically be enrolled in the relevant training as well. 4. Automatically Enroll New Learners in One or More Groups What if you need to add learners to multiple groups? Say you have Ahmed from Finance, who needs to take some New Hire training and Finance Team training, for example. Reach 360 makes that really easy, too. Simply invite a learner manually and select both groups from the drop-down menu. Then, when they accept the invitation, they’ll be automatically added to those groups and the training in which they’re enrolled. You can also add multiple new learners to the same group via CSV. Just add their information to a CSV spreadsheet, then import that file to the group. New learners will receive invitations while any pending users will be added to the group once they accept their invitation. You can even use the CSV method to remove old members from a group all at once. Perfect for refreshing a "New Employees" training group. 5. Bulk-Enroll Learners Looking for a quick and easy way to enroll a long list of learners? Bulk-import learners using a CSV file. You can even add them to specific groups by adding that information to the spreadsheet. For example, Sasha needs to be added to the New Hires and Marketing groups. Ronique needs to be added to New Hires as well, plus the Human Resources group. You get the idea. Rather than navigate the drop-down menu in Reach 360 for each one of those learners, you can just enter the group name in the appropriate field in the spreadsheet. 6. Automatically Enroll Learners via an API What if you want to have your cake and eat it too? Have learners self-register individually and be enrolled automatically in specific training? Or you’d like users to be assigned new training automatically when they finish what’s currently assigned to them? And you would like all of this to be controlled by your human resources information system (HRIS) software. Then you need an API. With a little bit of technical knowledge, someone versed in creating API commands can develop if/then commands that do exactly what I mentioned in the example above. When Jay signs up via the self-registration link, that event triggers the Reach 360 API command to enroll them in orientation training. Once they complete that, the API can automatically enroll them in the next course. And that’s just the automation that the Reach 360 Course Enrollment API can provide. Check out the full API collection for even more options. 7. Invite Users (and More) with Zapier Want API-style connectivity between the apps your organization uses and Reach 360 but don’t have programming skills? Check out Zapier! When you connect your Reach 360 account to your Zapier account, you can create a whole host of actions in minutes—no coding required. You can do things like: Email invitations to new learners when they’re added via HR software like SimplyHired or BambooHR. Award new CertifyMe credentials when users complete courses. Email Startquestion evaluations when a course is complete. And that’s just a tiny tip of the iceberg. Zapier supports thousands of apps and lets you create whatever you need with a few clicks. Read more about setting up Reach 360 and Zapier. Wrap-Up Reach 360 gives you all the options you need to quickly enroll learners and give them access to your training. Want to learn more about Reach 360? Check out these handy resources: Announcing Reach 360: A Quick & Easy Way to Deliver Training How to Share & Track E-Learning with Reach 360 4 Reasons Your Learners Will Love Taking Training Hosted on Reach 360 4 Times to Share Your Course with Reach 360 If you’re already an Articulate 360 subscriber and you want to try it out for yourself, request a Reach 360 trial here. And if you’re new to both Articulate 360 and Reach 360 and looking for an easy way to create and deliver training, start a trial of both here.How to Share an E-Learning Course on Your Intranet or Internet Website
Considering sharing your e-learning course on a website or your company intranet? It’s a great option for times you don’t need to track learner progress or quiz scores, and it’s supereasy to set up. In this article, we’ll walk you through the process, step by step. 1. Find a Web Server To share your course on your intranet or internet website, you have to upload it to a web server. But before you can do that, you need to find one you can use. Start by contacting your IT department to see if your organization already has a web server. If they do, great! Ask them if you can get access to it. If they don’t, here are two free options many e-learning pros use: Amazon S3. See this tutorial to learn how to get set up. Google Cloud. See this video tutorial to learn how to get set up. Note that there’s a usage limit for the free versions of the above web servers. If you go over the limit, you’ll be charged a small fee. 2. Publish the Course for Web Delivery Once you’ve identified a web server you can use and your course is finalized, you’ll want to publish or export it for web delivery. In most authoring apps—including those we offer at Articulate—this is as easy as selecting the Web option and hitting Publish. For more details, check out the links below: Rise 360: Publishing Content for Web Distribution Storyline 360: Publishing a Course for Web Distribution 3. Upload the Course to Your Web Server Next, you’ll want to upload the course files to your web server. If you’re using Amazon S3 or Google Cloud, you can do that directly in your browser by clicking the Upload button and selecting your files. Upload screen in Amazon S3 Some web servers require you to use an external app, called a File Transfer Protocol (FTP), to upload your course. If that sounds complicated—don’t worry! We made a short video to walk you through that process. 4. Share the Course Link with Learners Now that your course is uploaded, all that’s left is to send the course link to your learners. But how do you find the course link? It’s easy! Simply open the course folder on your web server and look for the HTML file. Depending on the authoring app you used to create your course, the name of this file—and therefore your course link—will be slightly different. Here are the file names for Articulate apps: Rise 360: index.html Storyline 360: story.html Storyline 360 course folder on Amazon S3 Once you find the HTML file, click on it to view the full URL. It’ll look something like this: Rise 360: http://www.myserver.com/coursename/index.html Storyline 360: http://www.myserver.com/coursename/story.html That’s the link you’ll want to share with learners so they can view your course. Wrap-Up Sharing your course on your intranet or internet website can be a good option if you don’t need to track learner data. And by following the steps outlined in this article, you’ll have your course in your learners’ hands in no time. Want to learn about other ways to share your course? Check out this article: How to Share E-Learning Courses with Learners. And remember to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any comments, please share them below. This article is part of our E-Learning 101 email course, a series of expertly curated articles that’ll help you get started with e-learning—delivered right to your inbox. You’re only a click away from becoming an e-learning pro! Sign up here to enroll.Choosing the Right Publishing Option for Your Storyline 360 Project
As you’re putting the finishing touches on your first Storyline 360 course and getting ready to hit Publish, you might be wondering: which publishing option should I choose? Great question! The answer can vary based on where you’re at in the course creation process and how you plan to give learners access to your course. In this article, we’ll take a look at all the possibilities and how to decide which one to choose. Review 360 This publishing option will upload your course to Review 360, the handy web-based review app that’s included in your Articulate 360 subscription. Choose this option when you want to share your course with your stakeholders to get their feedback and approval. Head on over to the tutorial to walk through how to publish to Review 360 step by step: Publishing a Course to Review 360. If you’ve never used Review 360 before, definitely give it a whirl! It makes the whole review process run so much more smoothly. You can learn even more about Review 360 and how it saves you time and hassle in these articles: 3 Ways Review 360 Is a Big Gift for Course Developers. 4 Time-Saving Ways to Use Review 360 Web If you’d like your learners to access your course via your company’s intranet or a website and you don’t need to keep track of their progress or record a quiz score, this is the option for you. If you do need to track learner progress or results, check out the LMS/LRS publish option below. For more details on publishing your course for the web, check out our tutorial Publishing a Course for Web Distribution. And once you’ve published a web version of your course, learn more about uploading it to your website: How to Share an E-Learning Course on Your Intranet or Internet Website. Wondering about mobile? Don’t worry! Our web output works on mobile devices automatically. Learn more here: Publishing a Course for Mobile Devices. Video If you want to upload your project to a video hosting site like YouTube or embed it in a Rise 360 course as a video, this is the publishing option you’ll want to choose. This option can be super useful if you’ve used Storyline 360’s animation features to create a short explainer or a course teaser to entice your learners, for example. When you choose to publish your project as a video, you’ll end up with an .MP4 file that you can upload anywhere that file type is supported. But keep in mind that the .MP4 format doesn’t support interactivity, so you’ll want to design your project accordingly. Check out this step-by-step tutorial for more information: Publishing a Course to a Video File. LMS/LRS If you’re using a learning management system (LMS) to deliver and track your courses, this is the publishing option you’ll want to choose. It’ll allow you to create a SCORM, AICC, API, or CMI5 package that you can then upload to your LMS. It also gives you the option to track your courses with alearning record store (LRS)—perfect for when you have xAPI-enabled learning experiences. Check out this article for all the publishing details: Publishing a Course for LMS/LRS Distribution. And, of course, our LMS/LRS output also works on mobile devices automatically. Find out more here: Publishing a Course for Mobile Devices. Word If you need a printable version of your course—to distribute as a handout or provide a transcript for accessibility purposes, for example—this is the option for you. In the past, some people used this option to share content with reviewers, but now that we’ve got Review 360, we hope that’s a thing of the past! If it’s still your present, you might want to read this article: Still Publishing to Word for Your SME Reviews? Here’s How & Why to Transition to Review 360. And for more information about publishing to Word, head on over to the tutorial Publishing a Course to Microsoft Word. Wrap-Up Hopefully this article has helped you identify the publishing options that make the most sense for your Storyline 360 project. Still have questions? Please share them in the comments below. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.
