Have you just spent hours getting your custom quiz set up just right, only to realise that your Storyline variables aren't being passed to the LMS?
I remember when I first realised that Storyline didn't pass the variables to an LMS. It seemed like a mistake. Like there must be an option somewhere to enable this. But there isn't, well, not an obvious one anyway!
In this tutorial, we will look at how to get Storyline to pass your variables to the LMS so they can be stored for future reference.
This means that you can create custom quizzes, including ones with multiple questions on one slide, and have the data stored in your LMS alongside your other interaction data.
This approach also allows you to grab other information and store it in the LMS. For example, let's create a form that the learner can use to tell the training department what other information they need.
Capturing Our Variables
Let's start with a basic form:
All that I've done here is add three text entry fields:
- One to capture the name
- One to capture an email address
- One to capture the message.
The information that is entered in these fields is stored in text variables called
The Send button at the bottom of the screen simply takes the user to the next slide, which is where the magic begins.
(Okay, it's not really magic...)
Passing Variables to the LMS
Now we need to set up some quiz slides that we can use to pass the variables to the LMS. You can think of these quiz slides as a form of transport. We aren't checking if the variable is right or wrong... we are just trying to get it recorded in the LMS.
So let's start by adding a new survey question to the project by going to Insert > New Slide > Quizzing > Survey > Short Answer.
Now that we have a survey quiz slide added to our project, we need to make a few changes so that one of our variables can be added to this question slide and submitted to the LMS without any further interaction from the user.
Why use that question type?
You may be wondering why we are using a short answer question type, instead of one of the other options. Don't worry about that now, we'll talk about that in more detail later.
So let's give our survey question an appropriate name. Given that this first quiz slide will be used to capture the
Name variable, an appropriate name would be... you guessed it... Name.
Once this is done, you can switch to the Slide View by clicking the Slide View button as shown below (or if you're a keyboard shortcut kinda gal, then you can just hit F3.)
Once in the Slide View, we need to make a couple of changes.
First, update the variable that is used by the text entry field. As you can see below, this is set to
TextEntry by default:
We want to change this to use our
Name variable, because then the contents of the
Name variable will automatically be copied here.
Then we need to change when the interaction is submitted so the user doesn't have to click the Submit button.
So, as you can see above, we need to change the When option to Timeline starts and the Object option to 1.2 Name (or whatever your slide is called).
So now your trigger panel should look something like this:
Making This Slide Invisible
We don't want the learner to see this slide, so let's add a 'Please wait, loading...' cover over the top of the slide content. Just use a shape to cover everything on the slide and add whatever loading text you want:
You'll notice in the above example that I've only included one full stop at the end of that sentence, rather than the full ellipses. That's because as we add our next two quiz slides (which we'll use to pass the
Message variables to the LMS), we will add the next two full stops in as a way of indicating progress as the variables get passed into these quiz slides.
Then you want to get rid of the Submit button, so hit up the Slide Properties:
And deselect the Submit button:
Name variable is ready to be passed to the LMS.
Passing the Next Variable to the LMS
Next, let's do the same for the
This will be simple, as we can re-use the quiz slide that we just finished setting up. Just right click on our Name slide and select Duplicate:
Then switch to Form View and change the question to Email:
Then you can jump back to Slide View and change the variable to
Finally, you can add another full stop to the end of your loading message to show that things are progressing (as depending on your LMS, it can take a second for the variable data to be captured).
Passing the Final Variable to the LMS
Okay, now we need to change things up a bit.
As you'll recall, for the first two questions we we're using the Short Answer question type to capture the variable data. However, these are limited to 256 characters, which is okay for the Name and Email, but it isn't enough for the Message.
So we would want to use an Essay question instead, as by default, this can handle up to 5000 characters.
And if you need more than 5000 characters, you can adjust this number from the Form View:
The rest of the process is the same. You'll need to update the question, change the variable to
Message and then add another full stop to the end of your loading message.
I know it seems like a lot when the process is all written out, but it really doesn't take too long to setup. I've worked on projects where we've needed to pass hundreds of variables to the LMS and I found the that some good music and a little dance really helped to speed up the process!
Please Say Thanks!
It is important to have a confirmation screen at the end of this so that the learner knows that their data has been submitted.
I'm a fan of being polite, so my final screen looks like this:
The thing is, this isn't a normal slide. It's actually a Result Slide, which is something we need to make sure this information is recorded in the LMS.
To set this up, go to Insert > New Slide > Quizzing > Result Slides > Blank:
Then you can check that each of your quiz slides are selected and that the Passing Score is set appropriately:
Next, go to the Options tab and deselect the Allow user to review quiz option:
Then we can add our thank you message and we will have finished setting up this file up so our three variables get captured in the LMS.
Here is a demo of the final project so you can see how it looks:
The above demo isn't entirely accurate as there is no LMS involved here.
When testing in an LMS, each loading screen may show for a second longer while the data is recorded. If you'd like to download a SCORM package to test in your LMS, please see below.
Files You Might Need:
Here is the .story file that was used in this example.
Here is a SCORM package you can use to see how this works in your LMS.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q. Does this work in SL3 and SL360?
A. I don't think so. But it works great in SL2! At some stage, I'll dig into why this isn't working in SL3 and SL360 and see if I can come up with an alternative way of doing this, but for now, grumble updates grumble breaking things grumble grumble.
Q. When I tried this, I got an Invalid Message error. What's up with that?
A. If your question is set to require an answer and the text entry field is left blank, then this will happen. You can get around this by going to the Question Tools Design tab and changing the Require field to User may skip:
Q. Do Articulate support this method?
A. Yes, here is their documentation.
Q. Does this work in HTML5? (i.e. will it work on my phone and tablet?)
A. Yes it will.
Q. Will this work in Articulate Mobile Player?
A. Yes, it should, although I haven't tested it. If you get a chance to try this out, let me know how it goes.
Q. Will this work in an LMS?
A. Yes, that's kind of the point! I've tested it in SCORM Cloud. If you'd like to test it in your LMS, there is a SCORM package above you can borrow.
Q. Does it matter if I use SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004?
A. No, both will capture the variables in the LMS. That being said, you'll only see the question text if you are using SCORM 2004. That's just the way SCORM rolls.
Q. What if I want to email these variables somewhere as well as record them in the LMS?
Q. Does this work with other types or variables?
A. Sure, if you need to capture a number variable in the LMS, you'd use a How Many survey slide to do this. Alternatively, you could use a text variable to hold your number, but then you wouldn't be able to do math with the variable. And math is cool.
Q. My question isn't listed here, what should I do?
A. Ask your cat. But she'll probably ignore you. It might be better if you can leave a comment below or contact me. I won't ignore you, promise.
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