Adding Xerte to Moodle via LTI - odd behaviour

Hi

I'm looking for a sanity check, if someone has the time. I'm trying to suggest recommended project settings to a colleague who wants to be able to track a score from a Xerte project in Moodle. We've used SCORM previously, but the Moodle SCORM player isn't particularly nice, so I've been trying LTI (as we've still not managed to get an LRS set up yet for xAPI). I see there's a bug listed for LTI so wonder if what I'm seeing is part of this. github.com/thexerteproject/xerteonlinetoolkits/issues/896

I can successfully embed my Xerte project in Moodle via LTI (using External Tool).

When a student accesses the project and works through it in a sensible way the score is passed to the gradebook (i.e. read content, attempt quiz, stop tracking)

If the student doesn't take the expected path, then odd things happen to the score. E.g. student opens the project, navigates through two pages and closes, the score is 100. If the student opens the project, navigates all the pages but doesn't attempt the quiz then the score is 0. If the 'save' button is visible, the score sends back 100 whenever it is clicked. If I hide the 'save' button then the stop tracking button doesn't work (i.e. it doesn't trigger the click event, and reveal the relevant text) but still returns a score to the gradebook.

I can't follow the logic of how it behaves compared to the settings in the project (see attached). The Restart property doesn't seem to have any affect at all, regardless of what is chosen.

Can anyone help explain what might be happening, or confirm if it's a bug (so I can stop!).

Thanks
Yvonne

Hi Yvonne,

No, it's not a bug. Because a grade is sent to Moodle.

I suspect that you are using LTI only (so no xAPI or LRS involved). Than, what you want ONLY works if a student finishes the whole project in one attempt. If there is no LRS, there is no way/no place to store the session data.

This does not help uoi, but I will have a look to make sure there are some nots in the LTI/xAPI page to indicate this and/or to give a warning on the save session page.

Thanks Tom - that really does help to clarify.

Hoping that we can get the LRS set up soon, to get some proper tracking in place.

Cheers
Yvonne

Hi Yvonne and Tom

We've recently implemented the Xerte LTI 1.3 integration on our Brightspace (D2L) VLE and I think are coming up against the same situation as you describe. For example, we have a Xerte project consisting of 10 pages with a quiz on page 5 and 6. A user accesses the Xerte Project via the LTI, navigates a few pages and the closes the browser tab without ever reaching the quiz. They then get a score of 100% in the gradebook...... I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, or something we've set up incorrectly in the Xerte project or in the VLE.

I understand the premise that the user has to complete the Xerte project (and the quiz within) to generate an accurate score to pass to the VLE. However, I think at the moment there is a risk that tutors could easily jump to wrong conclusions.

Just wondering if you discovered any workarounds to make things work better (not including xAPI and LRS, which are on our roadmap but not imminently!)

Many thanks,

Andy.

Hi Andy
For the academic I was supporting we decided to use SCORM export (and import to our Moodle VLE) instead - this has issues too - but we couldn't use LTI as it was too confusing. Another option would be to add a Results page to your Xerte project and ask students to download that and then submit it to the VLE. There's a way you can set up quizzes so that students can't keep re-doing it (I think - although off the top of my head I can't remember how - adding forced tracking maybe ...) so the results students download would be an accurate indicator of their understanding.
Yvonne

Great, thanks Yvonne! Good idea on the results page - that seems a good option.