[ARCHIVED] SANS Secure The Human SCORM Modules

[harrison]

Is anyone using the SANS Secure the Human SCORM modules in Canvas?  I have them implemented and want to discuss the behavior of the modules, esp. with the gradebook.

Bruce Harrison

UT Martin

[powellj]

We tried using it in Canvas about 1.5 years ago and were not successful. That's not uncommon with SCORM though - some work with some systems and some don't (longer explanation below**). It's very possible that it just won't work period. Even SANS told us "sorry" when we tried to work with them. Things might have changed in the last year and a half, but you'll need to be prepared with a Plan B instead of running the program in your own LMS.

**My understanding is that SCORM has a very loose set of technology standards, which makes it difficult to fully support. A SCORM package created from one software will not be identical to one created with something else - one might work, and the other won't. This makes it nearly impossible to support 100% on the receiving side. One package might work in BB, the other only in Canvas. I hate SCORM in case you can't tell. I tell faculty to avoid it like the plague. And in case you get too excited when one package actually works right, just wait about 6 months and it will stop working.

[harrison]

Jacci,

Thanks for the info!  I have the modules working fine, they play and then present a quiz.  Grade is written to the gradebook.  I'm wanting to use the APIs to see when someone completes the last module, etc.

If the user retakes the quiz, a new grade is sent to the gradebook, but then I get an average of the 2 (or more) grades I think.  I'm hoping it can be made to overwrite the last grade.  Still looking at things and experimenting...

Bruce

[QC99_tsilvius]

Hi Bruce. I'm working with a teacher who has been creating interactive SCORM games for students over on the wisc-online site and uploading them to her Canvas class. Things are going well. There was a recent update to SCORM functionality in Canvas but I'm not familiar with this or how it differs from the way Canvas managed SCORM content up to this update. The teacher has been using her custom-designed SCORM games as a practice activity placed after the direct instructional content pages in the module and before the quiz portion in the module. She is using module requirements with the SCORM activity that the students must try the SCORM "assignment" at least once for module credit towards completing the module; however, students are encouraged to repeat the game as often as they feel they must prior to taking the quiz. This is the way this teacher I'm working with is purposing her SCORM learning activities -- low-stakes, drill and kill substitute for flash cards and such. Her higher-stakes quiz and/or assignment tool that is graded follows the SCORM activity. Then once the students score a certain grade on the assessment according to the module requirement we added to it and complete the module, the badging system the teacher uses awards a badge to the student automatically. The teacher's goal is for students to engage in these modules outside of class so that she can review student understanding, progress/growth through the module, and get to application level learning activities with her students during her F2F class time with the students. One can think of this approach as a variation of flipped classroom but a very purposeful one in which the lower taxonomy levels (recall, comprehension) and are assigned for students to complete asynchronously while the higher level learning activities (application, synthesis, evaluation) are explored during the class time in the classroom.

I digress. The point is that we have worked to purpose her pedagogical approach to blended learning strategically knowing that SCORM hasn't gotten much love from Instructure in the past and can do certain things well, but not necessarily everything wonderfully. Keeping this in mind we used the SCORM tech in Canvas conservatively and have been reaping student learning rewards from it since. It sounds like you might be using your SCORM activities a bit more robustly than we are, and that could be because our SCORM activity builder over at wisc-online doesn't have much point awarding gradations. Regardless of the points the students earn when they play our SCORM games, those points from the SCORM score board don't translate directly to the Canvas Grade book equally; students simply earn 100 or nothing. So if I'm playing the AlienBand Q&A SCORM game in the Canvas course and earn 250 points for answering so many questions correctly, the SCORM activity communicates only 100points to the Canvas class Grade book.  Again, that could just be a limitation of the SCORM authoring system we're using, but in light of this, we designed learning paths that work with this minimal functionality of our SCORM activities relegating the SCORM learning activity in our course to a drill-and-kill activity that kids might want to play a few times not knowing they're rehearsing facts into longer and longer term memory for the quiz that follows and the test that is coming up even a few modules down the road for them :smileylaugh:.

So I'm not sure if this helps with your SANS Secure the Human activities or not, but the way we're using them might help you. In other words, perhaps if your SCORM activities are not cooperating with the Canvas grade book perhaps you can still use them for students to practice on and then afterwards, utilize the Canvas quiz tool like we are doing because we know the Canvas quiz tool is really terrific especially when it comes to applying online testing securities to the way the quiz behaves for each student, using it in tandem with question banks so each student receives questions randomly/in random order, as well as viewing the Quiz monitor and Quiz logs. 

Hope this helps.

Todd

[harrison]

Thanks for the info. The SCORM support in Canvas may be acting as designed… We’ll see… ☺

I have a call into SANS as well, there may be something we can do on their end as well.

Bruce

UT Martin

[harrison]

May have answered my own question.  SCORM and assignment setup

Short answer is You need to ensure that you are setting the Advanced Options setting for the Graded Assignment to report "points" and not "percentage."  

I did speak with SANS tech support and their SCORM module does return a raw score to the gradebook.

[QC99_tsilvius · Accepted solution]

Bruce, Thanks so much for sharing this SCORM and assignment setup. We tried setting our SCORM assignments as points but it just reported a 0 zero or max points. Nothing in between. I believe this is because of our SCORM authoring system we're using. But still, thanks for sharing all the same. Question back to you... I believe you're getting your SANS SCORM activities from a company who created the elearning activities, but do you happen to know of any other SCORM activity authoring sites by any chance where we can build our own SCORM elearning activities?

-TS

[harrison]

Take a look at http://scorm.com/scorm-explained/scorm-resources/scorm-authoring-tools/

This site has a lot of other SCORM info as well. I've never developed a SCORM module but think I'll look into it.

Yes, we are getting security awareness training modules from SAN Secure The Human people.

Bruce

Bruce

[QC99_tsilvius]

We are on the same wavelength,  @harrison . After I posted the reply I just found this yesterday, too, and already shared a few under the free link (naturally) with the teachers I'm working with. Thanks for thinking to reply to share the link all the same.

-TS

[rake_9]

Gotta love the creepy silver guys....

[harrison]

So true! ☺

[harrison]

We've been using the SCORM assignments with the "must take in order" set for our Required Training module in Canvas.

Everything seems to be working fine.  Grades are entered correctly in the grade book. We did set the assignments to report a score and not a percentage back to the grade book.

We have a nightly script running that checks for a grade audit entry on the last assignment, so we know when a person has completed the required training module. 

Bruce

[Robbie_Grant]

 @harrison ,

We are giving the Canvas Admins area a little bit of love (especially questions that are really, really old) and just want to check in with you.  This will also bring this question new attention. 

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie

[harrison]

I did find out that the video & quiz component of the SANS SCORM modules are actually hosted on their servers.  Video is viewed there and quiz taken there.  Quiz scores are then reported back to Canvas for entry into the grade book.

Off and on, we've had problems with their server taking excessively long to report grades back or to even present the videos & quizzes.

I think things are working as best they can with Canvas.  SANS SecureTheHuman as tweaked/updated/etc their servers and it seems to be much more reliable.