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Learning Progress: including a genuine percentage score for SCORM modules

1 Requirements

What is the problem?
 
The Learning Progress function (LP) does not provide an accurate (or even useable) percentage score for SCORM modules (SMs).
 
Currently the LP does provide a figure for SMs in the 'Percentage' column. However, where the SM contains only one SCO, this figure simply toggles between two options: 0% and 100%. (The two percentages correspond to the Complete or Incomplete status of the SM.) The reason for this is that, at present, the percentage given for a SM indicates the percentage of SCOs that are complete within the SM.
 
This gives rise to the following problems:
 

• Currently there is no place in the Ilias reporting system where the participant is given his or her percentage score. This is not given in the LP. And the participant has no access to the Tracking Data (which reports the percentage score, and more, to the administrator/teacher). I think everyone agrees that this state-of-affairs is most unsatisfactory.
• There is a clear lack of consistency in ‘Percentage’ column of the LP. For Ilias tests, this column reports a genuine percentage score (i.e. if the test-taker obtains 40 out of 50 points on the test, a score of 90% will be reported). For SMs, however, a score of 0% simply means that the participant failed the exercise. Thus for an exercise with a passing score of 70%, 0% would be given if the participant’s actual result was 5% (or 25% or 50%). Similarly, if the participant's result is 70% (or 80% or 90%), the LP will report 100%. (Again, these comments apply for single-SCO SMs.)
• All users (administrators and participants) lack a fully satisfactory at-a-glance overview of the participant’s progress. It is true that the LP provides the status (via colour-coded buttons) of both Ilias tests and SMs. This is helpful and necessary. However, to be fully effective, the LP overviews should include percentage scores.

What is the solution?
 
We should focus on the main issue: ensuring that the LP reports a genuine percentage score for SMs. I say this because there are, in fact, other improvements to the LP that should be made. Moreover, even as concerns the main issue, when one begins looking into the matter, one comes face-to-face with all sorts of complexities. Choices have to be made. For the time being, we need to stick to the essential. With this in mind, I will now be more specific about what I think should be done.
 
1. We should focus on ensuring that the LP provides an accurate percentage score for (1) single-SCO SMs where (2) Automatic by Collection of SCORM Items is selected. That is to say, if the LP can be set up so that it also works for (1) multi-SCO SMs and for (2) SMs where Automatic by SCORM Course Status is selected, fine. But for the time being, we should focus on finding a solution for single-SCO SMS and Automatic by Collection of SCORM Items, even if the resulting LP does not report an accurate percentage score for multi-SCO SMs or where Automatic by SCORM Course Status is selected.
 
I’ll now support this proposal. (1) We need action; partial success now is better than having to wait for a complete solution. (2) I’m convinced that most SMs, and even the vast majority, will contain only one SCO. (3) Regarding the Automatic by Collection of SCORM Items option I can only say this: (3.1) for SCORM 2.1 this is the only option, and (3.2) I’ve never been able to get the other option to work for SCORM 2004.
 
2. It has been suggested that for SCORM 2004 we should set up the LP to report the percentage score and the progress_measure (if available). If this can be accomplished easily, fine. But otherwise, I would focus on the percentage score for the time being.
 
3. It has been suggested that for SCORM 1.2, the raw score should always be reported and that the percentage score should be reported where the maximum score is available (the percentage score, i.e. the scaled score, would be calculated using the formula score.raw*100/score.max). I’m not sure what is envisaged here. At the moment, the raw score is the only score provided (for SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004), but only to the participant (not to the administrator) and only in the LP for the SM itself (not in the views of the LP provided at course or folder level). If the idea is to continue providing the raw score where it is currently available, this is fine. However, the raw score should never be provided in the ‘Percentage’ column of the LP. Moreover, the suggestion under discussion here implies that the percentage score may not always be available for SCORM 1.2 modules, since the maximum score is needed to calculate this and the maximum score is not always available. Whether this is correct, I cannot say. However, I think every effort should be made to report an accurate percentage score for all SMs, include those that use SCORM 1.2. If it is really the case that the maximum score is sometimes unavailable, then could we find another way of obtaining the percentage score? (This is always reported via Tracking Data. Can’t we somehow bring this information over to the LP?) Or if we could find the cause of the maximum score being unavailable, perhaps the problem could be solved at the level of the creation of the SMs or that of the creation of the exercises the SMs contain. In other words, if the maximum score is sometimes available and sometimes not, there has to be a cause. We could deal with the problem by dealing with the cause.

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Marvin DuBois
• Funding: Required
• Maintainer: Uwe Kohnle, Jörg Lützenkirchen
• Implementation of the feature is done by (company, developer)
• Testcases and tested by / status: (name, e-mail)

3 Discussion

JF 16 Mar 2015: We appreciate this improvement and schedule it for 5.1.

Zenzen, Enrico [ezenzen], 24 AUG 2022: This request no longer fulfills the requirements of the Feature Wiki. In consultation with the maintainer I change the status of the feature request to "Redundant / outdated". If the request is still relevant, please update template and mockups.

4 Implementation

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