Hide the Review Quiz button from an Articulate Quizmaker Quiz

Very similar to my earlier post on removing the Finish Button on an Quizmaker Quiz. The Review Quiz button can also be removed by creating our own swf in flash with some small actionscript that we will insert into the first slide/question of the Quiz.

So, in flash create a new fla and on frame one layer one just add the following actionscript:

_root.g_mcFrame.mcReviewQuiz.swapDepths(_root.getNextHighestDepth());
_root.g_mcFrame.mcReviewQuiz.removeMovieClip();

Publish this to a swf, then in quizmaker insert that swf onto your first question or slide, this code will make sure that review quiz button gets removed!

Enjoy!

Get Student Name on Print Results Page in Articulate Quizmaker using SCORM

Seems to be a couple requests for this one, but basically the problem is that by default there is no way to put the Students name on the Print Results page other than selecting the prompt student for name checkbox in quizmaker.

Well no worries, this is actually a simple fix, as long as you're publishing for your SCORM LMS.

Here's the code/solution:

In your quizzes published folder look for quiz_content/report.html

This is the html page that gets loaded.

Now, we need to add this code:

"window.opener.parent.GetStudentName()"

Where do we add it? well that depends on where you want it to show up!

For now just search for:

document.write("<P><H1>" + strTitle + "</H1></P>");

and replace with:

document.write("<P><H1>" + strTitle +"<br>"+window.opener.parent.GetStudentName()+ "</H1></P>");

This will put it just below the header! Test it out, and then try out moving it to different locations or adding formatting!

Hope this helps!

Load an Articulate Quiz into your Flash Project

I recently completed work on a new flash based course. Basically the course is made up of several captivate demos and a final articulate quiz that are all loaded and navigated through a main flash portal / shell. This main swf file loads all the other swfs including that quiz.swf file that Articulate Quizmaker produces.

I also used the SCORM HTML and javascript that Articulate publishes when you choose publish for LMS. In my case I just swapped out the body of the quiz.html and embedded my own swf portal. This way when I load the quiz it will still have access to all the JS it uses when it's by it self right?

well yes and no.

It seems that if the quiz.swf doesn't get the flashvars it needs when it first loads up, it shuts off all tracking calls, boo-urns!

Well the trick here seems to be in the actionscript, this works for IE I have not tested for other browsers:

function onLoadComplete(mc:MovieClip)
{
/*assuming mc is the quiz.swf, initiating these variables will turn on tracking*/
mc.vHtmlContainer=true;
mc.vCaptureRC=false;
mc.vIE=true;
}

Enjoy! and if you have a better way feel free to contact me!

One giant leap for serious games

Can gaming be a serious contender for a form of education?

It seems a pretty big employer is working with a pretty big gaming company to prove so.

Certainly not everything is suited for learning via gaming, but McDonalds is recognizing that their employers need to learn some pretty specific tasks that can be easily replicated within a gaming simulation on a format that their employees will already be familiar with.

I'm amazed this has taken this long to figure out considering Burger Time was released in 1982.

A couple things

1. Couple of comments on an old post about inserting a flash swf into an Articulate quiz to get the student name from SCORM. Given the interest in this technique I am looking into file hosting options to start to actually post sample files as opposed to just the code. So if you have suggestions for (free) file hosting I would love to hear them.

2. A very geekish article on using alternate grading to increase motivation, I think it's fantastic and could be applied without the heavy gaming overtones.


Should be posting regularly again, I'd give you my excuses, but it's my blog I can post if I want to.

Developing your own Captivate Playback Controller

Been working on a course that relies heavily on integrating Captivate demos into a large Flash based course environment. Was getting very frustrated at the limitations of the swf that Captivate exports and started wondering if there was a way to access variables within that swf file to control it's playback.

Sure enough thanks to an article at pipwerks about using Javascript to control captivate, I was then directed to the Captivate Giant Manual, which eventually gave me this list of variables that you can use to control a captivate swf if you load it into your flash movie:

rdcmndPrevious
set to 1 to go previous slide

rdcmndNextSlide
set to 1 to go to next slide

rdcmndPause
set to 1 to pause the project

rdcmndResume
set to 1 to resume showing a paused project

rdcmndRewindAndStop
set to 1 to rewind and stop the project

rdcmndRewindAndPlay
rset to 1 to rewind and play the project

rdcmndGotoFrame
go to a specific frame

rdcmndExit
set to 1 to exit

rdcmndInfo
display the information window

rdinfoFrameCount

total number of swf frames in the project (this is not the number of frames in the main Timeline, but the sum of
all slide frames)

rdinfoSlidesInProject
number of slides in the project (including hidden slides)

rdinfoCurrentFrame
current frame (goes from 1 to rdinfoFrameCount when you play the project)

rdinfoCurrentSlide
slide currently playing (zero based)

rdinfoSlideCount
number of slides in the project (not including hidden slides)

rdIsMainMovie
can be used to identify whether the SWF corresponds to the main Adobe Captivate project

Note: To control the project through the skin file, add the prefix cpSkinLoader_mc to the variables.

Internal or Offline Learner Tracking for Articulate Quizmaker

Based on a discussion at the eGuild, it seems there is a demand to setup Quizmaker for tracking users without using a LMS or any online solution.

The following is the beginning steps into creating your own custom tracking, this will show you how to extract users interactions from Quizmaker, from here you will need to use whatever technology (asp, php etc) to save the information.

I think that this solution is perfect for those who have no other option than to develop their own internal solution, and can not use third party web apps. For those who do not have this restriction, I highly recommend that you use Articulate Online. You can go swimming in JS and Server Side Languages all you want but you're not going to get as complete and detailed reports as Articulate Online can offer you.

Anyways, the solution:

1. Publish a Quiz for a LMS

2. In the main quiz folder remove everything except quiz.html, quiz.swf and the quiz_content folder.

3. Create a new javascript file named tracking.js

4. In that javascript write the following function:

function lms_DoFSCommand(command, args)
{
alert("command" + command);
alert("args" + args);
}


5. In quiz.html add this to the header:

<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" SRC="tracking.js" TYPE="text/javascript"></script>


You should now get Popups while you use the quiz, this shows you all the quiz interactions. From here you can parse and send this information to a flat file.