Accessibility updates

I am back,

It has only been two years - and in my defence the world has been on fire for a year of that. Plus I don't have a large number of readers do I?

No Katie, you do not!

I was very excited to learn that the December update of Articulate 360 included accessibility features that allow a user to modify the text font and size and change colours. I was less excited to learn that doing this through Blackboard when you publish as a SCORM package was not super simple!

But I have done it.

After you have run your Storyline update anything you publish will have the accessibility tools on the player as a default.

 

As default accessible text is set to off (false). You can change this from the variables menu, built in variables. However, at time of writing, I would advise against having the accessible text on as default as it has a minor effect on the formatting.

So far so simple.

If you are publishing your content for the web - all is good now. However, if you are publishing for a VLE using SCORM there are a few things to note.

1. Articulate support were really helpful, and they pointed me to SCORM cloud as a platform for testing - which was actually really helpful as it means you don't have to faff about deploying things in a VLE.

2. Not all accessibility software is created equal, I think I will end up recommending the free version of helperbird, not because it is necessarily better than other tools but this is the one I got to work most effectively in this scenario (and actually with Blackboard in general)

3. And this is the important bit, as far as I can tell it doesn't work if you set your player to open in 'frameset’. The best option I have found is

SCO launch = new window

Player launch = frameset.

(this can all be tested easily in SCORM Cloud)




On the one hand this is good because the default is new window. On the other hand, I prefer to use 'frameset' as it gets around the pop-up window (and it being blocked by internet settings etc)

pastry assistance

In response to  my previous post I decided to try and put a bit of motivation into a STATA quiz - seven sections of medical statistics (thrilling). So at the end of each section I added in an extra results slide to break up the quiz and say well done to the students. Time will tell if they like it!

It wasn't all plain sailing either... I was struggling to get it to report to the grade book so I decided to motivate myself by going out for a pastry. As soon as I got out of the office I realised what my problem was, because I had put in extra results slides, when publishing I needed to tell Blackboard which one to look at... simple really.

Needless to say even though the problem was solved I still went to get to the pastry, which, I think, proves that everything is better when you have a pain au chocolat.

Let Me See about that SCORM

My challenge of the day was to get my SCORM package created in Storyline into Blackboard and reporting to the gradebook.
It took me a few attempts (and an email from a helpful colleague) to get them right but I seem to be getting reports into the gradebook from a PC and a tablet so it is looking good :)

Step 1 - Player settings.

When I first tested on an tablet (Samsung) I had this problem.

The submit button was cut of and I could not resize the screen. It worked if I rotated the screen but that left the player very small. So in player settings I did this...

(worth  noting is, even in my super awesome version of Blackboard where files update automatically if they are changed in the file system, SCORM packages don't seem to update. I had to remove and rebuild the package)
- although that could just be me -


Step 2 - LMS settings

When publishing the story you are also given options for reporting.

Under advisement I set my reporting to pass/fail.
I think - purely speculation at this point - that if you set it to complete/incomplete for it to report to the grade book you also need to change the settings on your results slide.

Finally - The SCORM settings

My SCORM settings looked like this. The top half of course changes depending on your requirements but under advisement again I set the grading settings as shown.

I tried messing with them and didn't get results in my grade book so this is my settings and I am sticking with them!






And just to prove it works...

Here is my grade book with multiple results reported!