How Students Access On-line Content

The following steps provide an overview of how students interact with SCORM and Tin Can-compliant course content on an e-Business website:

1. A course administrator or instructor creates web-enabled Courses and Classes in Aptify.
   • See How to Use Education Management for details.
   • For classes that use Aptify Learning Management System (LMS) content, the course administrator also needs to import the appropriate SCORM or Tin Can files into Aptify as Course Parts records using the import wizard and then link those Course Parts to the appropriate Course and/or Class. See Importing Online Course Content and Adding On-line Content Parts to Courses and Classes for details.
      
2. The student registers for a class that includes LMS content.
   • With Aptify, students can register for classes online on an e-Business site or an Aptify user can register students from an Aptify staff interface. See Managing the Class Registration Service for details.
      
3. Once registered, the student accesses the class's page on the e-Business site.
   • See Managing the e-Business Education Portal for more information. 
     
4. To access class content, the student clicks the Syllabus link from the list on the left side of the page.
   • The e-Business site displays the list of Course Parts associated with the class. For each Course Part, the site displays the following information from the corresponding Course Parts record:
     • Name (with an active hyperlink when applicable)
     • Description
     • Type (such as Lesson or Quiz)
     • Duration (in minutes)
        
   • In addition, the Course Part list has a Status column which indicates the student's current progress within the class material.
     • When a student access the syllabus for the first time, all Course Parts have a Status of Not Started.
     • A Course Part's Status is tracked on the Class Registrations record's Part Status tab (described later in this section).
     • The possible status values for a course part depends on the type of content you have uploaded, but possible values include In-Progress, Completed, Passed, and Failed.
        
   • Course Parts that have available content have an active hyperlink.
   • Parts that cannot be started until prior parts have been completed are not available and a note appears below the part indicating this requirement. The previous parts must have a Status of Completed, Passed, Success, or Failed for the hyperlink to the next part to be active.
     

5. The student clicks the link for the first available course part, which opens the content in a separate Web browser window.
   
   

   If the window displaying the course content is too small, you can update the do_open_content() method in the ViewClass.ascx user control to set the size of the windows before they are launched. For example:

   <script type="text/javascript">
       function _do_open_content(url) {
          var x = screen.width / 2 - 950 / 2;
          playerWindow = window.open(url,'aptify_e_learning_content',   toolbar=no,menubar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,height=570,width=950,left='+ x);
        }
   </script>

   
   
   

   • For Aptify LMS content, e-Business launches the content using the LMS Content Player (which was added to the e-Business site during the Aptify LMS installation).
   • By default, content opens in a single window. The content player also supports a two-window approach (which was the default in Aptify LMS 5.0).
     • To change the default from one window to the two window approach, modify the Aptify On-line Learning Management System's LaunchType attribute from 1 to 2 in the Learning Management Systems record.
     • Note that if you change the LaunchType attribute, the new value only applies to content uploaded from that point forward. Existing content continues to use its current window approach. To modify existing content, a system administrator can edit the values of the content's sco_launch_type and player_launch_type in the ScormPackageProperties table of the AptifyLMS database. Aptify recommends setting both values to 1 to use the 1-window approach.
        
   • When a user launches on-line content, the player validates that the user has appropriate access to the content (based on the user's active class registration and a cookie that is set during e-Business login). If a user attempts to access content to which he/she does not have access, an Access Denied message appears in place of the required content.
     • The LMS security approach prevents a user from copying and pasting a URL in another browser or from sharing the content URL to another individual.
     • An organization needs to deploy the updated Login and Profile user controls from LMS 5.5.1 (as described in the installation instructions) to ensure that the LMS cookies are set properly.
        

   • The example shown below is the Aptify Gantt View E-Learning course that was created as SCORMcompliant content using Adobe Captivate (a third-party authoring tool).
     
      
     
     

     If your content includes MP4 videos, those videos will not load unless your IIS server is configured to play MP4 files by adding an associated MIME type. Follow these steps to configure Microsoft IIS so that it can play MP4 files (these steps are for IIS 7.5 but the specific steps may vary depending on your version of IIS):
     

     1. Open IIS Manager and select the Web Site that hosts the ScormEngine and Courses applications.
     2. Double-click the MIME Types icon.
     3. Click the Add... option in the Actions pane.
     4. Enter .mp4 as the File name extension and video/mpeg as the MIME type.
     5. Click OK.
     6. Restart IIS.

     
     
     

6. If the student closes the Aptify LMS content before completing it, the Course Part has a status of In-Progress the next time the student accesses the Class's page on the e-Business site.
   
   
   
   
   • Behind the scenes, Aptify created a Part Status record on the student's Class Registration record's Part Status tab to track his or her progress within that Course Part. The Part Status record includes the following information:
     • Course Part: Field that links to the Course Parts record accessed by the student.
     • Status: Field that describes the current status of the student within the Course Part's content. The available options are In-Progress, Success, Failed, Completed, and Passed. Note that if a Course Part is marked as Not Started on the e-Business site, then no Part Status record exists for that Course Part yet on the corresponding Class Registrations record.
     • Start Date: Field that specifies the date and time at which the student first accessed the Course Part.
     • End Date: Field that specifies the date and time at which the student completed the Course Part's content.
     • Time Taken: Field that specifies the amount of time in minutes that the student has had the LMS content open to date. This value is rounded up to the nearest minute. Note that Time Taken only appears for Tin Can content when the part is completed. If Tin Can content is In-Progress, the Start Date is filled in but Time Taken is blank. When the student finished the content, the total time taken will appear in this field.
     • Score: Field that lists, if applicable, the student's score for the Course Part once completed. This is normalized on a scale from 1 to 100. This is only applicable for LMS content that has a testing component such as a quiz or exam.
     • Percent Score: This field lists the same value as Score (since the Score is already normalized on a scale from 1 to 100). As with Score field, this field is only applicable for LMS content that has a testing component such as a quiz or exam.
     • Answer Analysis: This tab shows information from the LMS Reporting Details service for this particular interaction (filtered to show only interactions with a Verb of Answered). It reports the number of questions that the student answer correctly and incorrectly, as well as the student's response to each question, along with the correct answer.
     • All Activity: This tab shows all information from the LMS Reporting Details service for this particular interaction. It includes all of the information displayed on the Answer Analysis tab.
     • Other Info: By default, a student's activity on the e-Business site does not populate these fields. An Aptify staff user can add information to these tabs as needed to track any applicable information or comments.
       
       
7. The student returns to the e-Business site at a later point and accesses the incomplete Course Part content again.
   • Depending on how the LMS content was developed, the student may be prompted to continue the material from the point at which he or she left off, as shown in the example in Figure 3.6. Note that this is a feature of the authoring tool you select and not configurable within Aptify LMS.
     
     
8. When the student completes a particular course part, he or she closes the content player and returns to the e-Business site.
   • The Course Part's Status is updated to the appropriate completed status (such as Completed or Success if there is no testing element, or Passed or Failed if a test or quiz). Note that the Status options for a particular Course Part is defined in the SCORM or Tin Can content authoring tool.
   • A part that was previously unavailable because the prior parts were not completed is now available for selection (as shown for the Aptify Quiz example in Figure 3.7).
   • If the Class page does not refresh automatically, the student may need to refresh the page manually to update the part's status. SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 content should refresh the Class's page automatically but Tin Can content will require a manual refresh by the user. Also, if the user's e-Business session timed out while viewing the on-line content, the user will be prompted to login again to continue.
     
     
     
   • Behind the scenes, Aptify has modified the Part Status record to update the Status, Time Taken, and a End Date fields.
     
   • If applicable, Aptify also updates the Score and Percent Score fields (both normalized out of 100) for Course Parts that include a testing element, like a quiz, test, or exam). The passing score for the test is defined within the authoring tool used to create the LMS content, and Aptify sets the Status accordingly.
      
9. The student continues accessing Course Parts until he or she has completed all of the class material.
10. An instructor or course administrator reviews the student's results, as described in Evaluating a Student’s Results.