Adobe Captivate - Configuring SCORM in a project to report quiz grades to Canvas [UW-Madison]

Why use a SCORM-enabled Captivate object?

SCORM enables you to connect a Captivate object to a LMS gradebook item. It can be especially useful for professional programs where there needs to be a record of a student completing an online activity.

Why not use a SCORM-enabled Captivate object?

Enabling SCORM in a Captivate project and using it in a learning management system is a more advanced and time-consuming topic as evidenced by the length of this article. Only attempt this if you are comfortable with technical tasks or have local support to assist you. Students will often gain many of the same learning benefits from self-study and reflection if they go through a Captivate learning object with testing even when it does not report a grade to the gradebook. The Canvas SCORM tool can play SCORM content and, if you wish, return a score to the Canvas gradebook. Some things to note:

• A SCORM assignment does not provide reports on other tracking that may occur within the SCORM package, regardless of how the SCORM package is set up. For example there is no way to see how a student answered a particular question within a SCORM assignment.
  
• Students can re-take a SCORM assignment as many times as they would like within the Available From / To dates and times.
  
• A SCORM assignment only takes the student's most recent attempt. There is no functionality to configure it to take the highest score for example. If a student re-enters a SCORM module they have already taken and exit it without answering questions, it will reset their score to 0.
  

Additionally, if you plan to use the Captivate project on a website, you will want to disable grade reporting and SCORM before you publish. If you don’t, you’ll get an error message when you display the project on your website. 

Tracking progress and scores

Begin by carefully considering your needs for tracking of student progress and scores. For example, consider whether it is important that students be able to continue an interrupted lesson precisely where they left off, or whether grades will be assigned. If grading will be done, you must define what a student must do to be "complete" or "successful." For example, is credit gained by simply accessing the exercise, or must a student view a number of slides, or achieve a minimal quiz score? Leaving scoring options at their default settings will likely result in undesired grading. Plan on testing your Captivate SCORM project inside your learning management system after you have uploaded it.

Enabling Reporting in Captivate

If you want to create a Captivate learning object that reports a grade to a learning management system you’ll first need to enable reporting in your Captivate project.

1. After launching Captivate and creating a new project or loading an existing project click on File → Project Info.
   
   
2. A Preferences window will open. Click on the Quiz → Reporting category on the left. Check Enable reporting for this project:
   
   
   
3. Select the Standard dropdown. For greater detail in tracking select SCORM 2004. If you want simpler tracking you can select SCORM 1.2 :
   
   
   
4. Click the Configure button next to SCORM 2004.
   
   
5. Select the 3rd Edition radio button. Enter a course and SCO Identifier and Title that will make sense to you. The Course → Identifier is what is is displayed by default as the name of the learning activity to the user viewing the project in an LMS:
   
   Click the OK button when you are finished.
   
   
6. In the Preferences pane click the Advanced button near the bottom of the window. Check Send Data On Every Slide, Never Send Resume Data, and Escape Version and Session ID:
   
   Checking Never Send Resume Data doesn’t allow students to pick up where they left off if they leave a learning object mid-way through but the data reporting is cleaner for learning management systems like Canvas. When you are done click OK.
   
   
7. Back in the Preferences window click Settings on the right under Category → Quiz → Settings. Enter a name for your quiz and Objective ID. Also set the Required drop-down how you would like. In this example it will be set to Pass Required - The user must pass this quiz to continue:
   
   
   
8. Next click on Pass or Fail on the left side of the Preferences screen. First set how you will determine whether the student passed or failed. You can set a radio button either for a percentage of points or for a total number of points. You can also set what happens should the student pass or fail. I’ll allow the student to retake the quiz up to 3 times:
   
   
   
9. There are many other options you can set in the Preferences → Quiz → Reporting, Settings, and Pass or Fail preferences. There are too many options to go into in detail here, but make sure you set aside enough time to do some testing to make sure the quiz reporting works like you expect. You can find a more extensive reference on the settings here.

Setting Quiz Properties

1. After you’ve created a quiz or learning interaction, click on the Properties button on the right side of the screen. Next click on the Quiz tab:
   
   
   
2. Look for Reporting near the bottom right. Make sure Report Answers is checked.
   
   
3. A default Interaction ID should exist for your quiz question. Enter something that will make more sense to you when you are looking at your SCORM report. You can also click on your other Captivate questions to set their Interaction IDs as well.
   
   You have now completed the basic setup of your Captivate project in preparation for publishing and uploading to an LMS and connecting it to your gradebook.

Publishing

Once you have authored your Captivate project and set all the reporting settings, you need to publish your project:

1. When you are ready to publish, select File → Publish or by clicking Publish → Publish to Computer on the toolbar.
   
   
2. Next to Output Format make sure only HTML5 is selected. SWF is the older Flash format output that is not compatible with some devices and requires the student to install the Flash plugin. Make sure Zip Files is checked and that you know the Location where your zip file is being published:
   
   
   
3. Click the More button in the lower left of the window. The window will expand. Here you can see a link the eLearning Output settings. If you want you can click the link to further refine your settings.
   
   
4. Once you are done click Publish. This will create a zip file which you can use to upload to your LMS. Depending on what LMS you are using see:
   Canvas - How do I import SCORM files as an assignment? Be sure to also review Canvas - About the SCORM tool in Canvas [UW-Madison]
   

After you have imported your project into your learning management system take some time to test it to make sure the grade being reported to your gradebook is what you are expecting. Please note that SCORM reports are not available in Canvas. You will only get the grade from your Captivate module reported to the Canvas gradebook.