Macromedia Breeze Presenter 5 can communicate with several different learning management systems (LMS). These LMS options might look familiar, since most of them were available in previous versions of Macromedia Breeze. However, much of the architecture for communicating with the LMSs changed in Macromedia Breeze Presenter 5. These changes include improved support for the AICC and SCORM 1.2 standards and additional support for the SCORM 2004 standard.

This article gives you an overview of the tracking mechanisms available in Breeze Presenter 5 and includes procedures to help you understand how to use them. It does not discuss the specific benefits of using a learning management system (LMS) or the issues of using any specific LMS standard. These topics will be covered by other articles in the Breeze Presenter 5 Resource Center.  (See output options articles AICC Tracking and SCORM Tracking.) The procedures in this article are pretty much the same regardless of whether you are integrating with an AICC or SCORM-compliant LMS.  To better understand the information that is communicated between the Breeze Presenter 5 content and an LMS, we will show how to integrate with the Breeze Server and the results of launching/tracking sample Breeze Presenter 5 content.

To better understand some of the terminology in this document and view links to other information, you can visit Macromedia’s eLearning website. For the purposes of this document, I may refer to the communication with an LMS as "tracking" or "tracking mechanism," because I am referring to tracking the results of Breeze Presenter 5 files. 

Requirements

To follow the procedures described in this article, you need to have the following software installed on your computer:

Breeze Presenter 5 (or Breeze Presenter 5 published files)

• Try
• Buy

Flash Player (version 6 or later).

• Download Flash Player (723 K)

• You may use additional software, if you are publishing for Breeze, AICC, or SCORM.
• This article is written for all user levels.  It provides an overview for new users as well as an entry point for users looking for specific LMS integration.

Overview

Breeze Presenter 5 can send data to a number of LMS tracking mechanisms.  The LMS tracking mechanisms that Breeze Presenter 5 is able to integrate with include the following industry standards:

• Breeze 5 Server
• AICC-HACP
• SCORM 1.2
• SCORM 2004

Tracking Process

With Breeze Presenter 5 you can easily create presentations, which may include quizzes, and track them in a standards-based LMS. The LMS tracking mechanism used by Breeze Presenter 5 content is extremely robust, while making the process to create and deploy the content quite simple and easy.  The LMS tracking mechanism automatically bookmarks, resumes, and maintains "state" data, which remembers how learners answered questions in quizzes that you have created with Breeze Presenter.  Breeze Presenter 5 makes the process simple for you, while performing a lot of complicated work.

You can use existing PowerPoint presentations or build new presentations, and then use the Breeze Presenter Quiz Manager to build and manage your quizzes and tracking options. After you are finish, you "publish" the file and Breeze Presenter creates a "Universal Package," or a single set of files that can communicate to a Breeze Server in addition to any AICC-HACP, SCORM 1.2, and SCORM 2004-compliant LMS.

The process for generating and integrating tracking content from Breeze Presenter 5–based files is the same, regardless of the LMS you plan to integrate with. This section covers the process that you use to build and publish Breeze Presenter 5 files for LMS integration. Though I focus on the general process, the procedure presented in this section explicitly outputs data to Breeze 5 Server. You can find explicit information about each of the output options in articles in the Macromedia Breeze Presenter 5 Resource Center.

The basic process for building and integrating tracked content in Breeze Presenter 5 is as follows:

• Creating a Breeze Presenter 5 presentation with an interactive quiz
• Setting or modifying reporting options on graded interactions
• Enabling and configuring tracking options in the Quiz Manager
• Configuring additional settings and publish the presentation with the Publish dialog box

The following section explains the process for creating an interactive Breeze Presenter 5 presentation that tracks content to the Breeze 5 server.

Creating a Breeze Presenter 5 Presentation with a Quiz

Breeze Presenter 5 can track user information though interactive quizzes in a variety of ways, such as multiple choice, true/false, and other question types. This section assumes you are creating a new presentation and will add different types of interactions for demonstration. Follow along, but feel free to experiment with other options available, even if they are not explicitly discussed.

1. Start PowerPoint with the Breeze Presenter 5 plug-in (or, if PowerPoint is already started, select File > New from the menu bar).
2. Type Breeze Presenter 5 Quiz in the Click to add title text box.
3. Type An Overview in the Click to Add Subtitle text box.
4. Save the PowerPoint Presentation as BreezePresenterQuiz.ppt in the My Breeze Presentations folder.

5. Select Breeze > Quiz Manager from the menu.

   Note: If the Breeze menu is not displayed in the PowerPoint menu bar, you probably don’t have Breeze Presenter 5 installed. Please contact your Macromedia representative for information on how to download and install the Breeze Presenter 5 plug-in.

6. Breeze Presenter 5 supports a number of new question types. To add a new question, click the Add New Question button to open the Question Types dialog box (Figure 1).

   

   Figure 1. Question Types dialog box

7. With "Multiple choice" highlighted, click Create Graded Question to insert a multiple choice question.

8. Type What is 1 + 1? in the Question text box; enter 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively, as possible answers; select 2 as the correct answer (see Figure 2)

   .

   Figure 2. Multiple Choice Question settings/dialog box

9. Click OK to return to the Quiz Manager.
10. Now add a True/False question type by clicking Add New Question, selecting True/False, and clicking Create Graded Question.
11. Type The sky is blue? for the Question text.
12. Keep True/False as the default distractors.
13. Keep True as the correct answer.

Setting or modifying Reporting Options on Graded Interactions

One of the most powerful features of Breeze Presenter 5 is the ability to track interaction or question –level details and send them to an LMS. Interaction-level details include responses to individual questions, such as how long it took them to answer a question, how they were supposed to respond, how they actually responded, etc. Breeze Presenter can automatically track the interaction data and send it to an LMS, separately from other tracking data, such as the overall score, status and time. The bulk of the interaction data is determined dynamically, but some of the data such as the Interaction ID and Objective ID are entered by the Breeze Presenter developer in the Reporting tab of the question form. The entire set of data that can be sent to an LMS includes:

• Date – the date the interaction was taken.
• Time – the time the interaction was answered.
• Interaction ID – the identifier given to a specific interaction. This can be anything you’d like, but it is recommended that you use a consistent and unique naming method for ease of maintenance and reporting.
• Objective ID – this corresponds to the objectives set up in Assignable Unit (AU) for AICC or the Shared Content Object (SCO) for SCORM in the LMS

• Interaction Type – the type of interaction being tracked. The interaction types may include:

  • true-false – the interaction has two possible responses.
  • choice – the interaction has a set of two or more possible responses.
  • fill-in – the interaction requires the student to supply a short response.
  • long-fill-in – the interaction requires the student to supply a response in the form of a long string of characters.
  • likert – the interaction asks the learner to select from a discrete set of choices (non-judged).
  • matching – the interaction consists of two sets of items.
• Correct Response – the expected question response.
• Student Response – the actual question response.
• Result – whether the interaction was answered properly.
• Weighting – the overall importance of the interaction (relative to other interactions).
• Latency – the amount of time it took to answer the interaction.

You can determine which questions send question-level detail to the LMS. For each question, you can explicitly set whether to send the question to the LMS, what quiz it’s associated with and a unique value for its Interaction ID. To set or modify these reporting options for each question:

1. Click the Reporting tab, in the question component dialog box.

   

   Figure 3. Reporting options (for sending/configuring interaction-level data)

2. After making any changes to the values, click OK to save settings and close the Multiple Choice Question dialog box.

Enabling and Configuring Tracking options in the Quiz Manager

Tracking, not to be confused with the interaction-level tracking mentioned previously, is the more generic data about the entire presentation that is communicated with an LMS. This includes communicating the score, location, status, and time—in addition to other data such as the number of attempts on a quiz, and so on.

To enable tracking and send results to any of the tracking mechanisms, you need to enable output options:

1. If the Quiz Manager dialog box isn’t open, select Breeze > Quiz Managerfrom the PowerPoint menu bar.
2. Select Enable Reporting for This Presentation, if it’s not already selected.

3. Make sure Breeze is the selected LMS option.

   Note: Breeze is the recommended LMS standard to publish to because it provides all of the files required for communicating to AICC, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004 and Breeze LMSs.

4. In the Report Score to LMS area, select Percent.

5. Keep the remaining options as default (and shown below in Figure 4).

   

   Figure 4. Enabling tracking options in the Breeze Quiz Manager Reporting tab.

   (+) View larger

   The options in the Quiz Manager, while not changed for our purposes, are described in detail as follows.

   • Learning Management System (LMS) area includes these options:

     • Breeze – select this option forpublish to Breeze (or any LMS standard and especially if you are publishing for more than one LMS standard for the same file).
     • AICC – select this option forpublishing only to an AICC-HACP-compliant LMS.

     • SCORM – select this option for publishing only to a SCORM-compliant LMS.

       Note: Breeze is always the recommended LMS standard to publish to because it provides all of the files required for communicating to AICC-HACP, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, and Breeze LMSs.

     • Click the Manifest button to complete the Manifest section and to select the SCORM version you want to explicitly publish for.

       

       Figure 5. Manifest data form

       (+) View larger

   • Choose Report Data area includes the following options

     • Report to Breeze

     • Report quiz results only

       • If there is no quiz, and the user has viewed 100% of the slides in the presentation, then set a lesson status of "completed."
       • If there is a quiz, but for all quizzes the score required to pass is zero, then always set a status of "completed" when all the quizzes are completed
       • If there is any quiz, with a passing score > 0, then on completion of all quizzes set a status of "passed" if the score was at least the passing score for all quizzes, or "failed" otherwise.

     • Report user access only

       • Whether or not there is a quiz, set a lesson status of "completed" when the presentation is loaded.

     • Report quiz results and slide views

       • If there is no quiz, and the user has viewed 100% of the slides in the presentation, then set a lesson status of "completed."
       • If there is a quiz, but for all quizzes the score required to pass is zero, then set a lesson status of "completed" twice (when the user completes all the quizzes, and when the last slide is viewed).
       • If there is any quiz, with a passing score > 0, then set two distinct lesson statuses: on quiz completion of all quizzes, set a status of "passed" if the score was at least the passing score for all quizzes, or "failed" otherwise; set a status of "completed" when the user has viewed 100% of the slides in the presentation.

     • Report slide views only

       • Whether or not there is a quiz, set a lesson status of “completed” when the user has viewed all slides. Status is not affected by quiz completion.

     • Slide view completion

       • Only available when "Report quiz results and slide views" or "Report slide views only" is selected.
       • Change the value to reflect the percentage of slides that must be viewed to complete the presentation.

   • Report Pass or Fail area includes the following options:

     • Report Complete/Incomplete

       • Even if student failed to achieve a passing score.

     • Report Pass/Fail

       • Based on the student’s score.

     • Report Status as Defined by the Report Data

       • If Breeze is selected in the Report Data section, then the status is sent as "incomplete" until the presentation is completed.
       • If the presentation contains a quiz, the status is sent as "passed" or "failedv based on the student’s score relative to the passing score.
       • If the presentation does not contain a quiz, the status is sent as "completed."

   • Report Score to LMS area includes these options:

     • Score (Typically a score based on the number of interactions presented to the user, in Raw, Min, Max format or as "8, 0, 10." If the student had 10 questions and they answered 8 of them correctly, for instance).
     • Percent (percentage of overall score, such as "80" for 80%).

   • Reporting level includes the following options:

     • Only report the score (tracking data). The tracking data that is sent includes basic "core" data such as:

       • Score: How well the student performed with tracking interactions
       • Location: Where the student left off (where they currently are in the quiz).
       • Status: Whether the student has completed, passed or failed.
       • Time: The amount of time spent in this session.
       • Lesson or Resume data: State data, including how the student answered specific questions.

     • Report interactions and the score (tracking data)

       Note: Not all LMSs track interaction-level details; many track only “core” data fields. You may need to contact your LMS vendor or administrator to find out if interaction-level tracking is supported.

   • Advanced Settings

     • Click the Settings button in the Advanced area of the Reporting tab to open the LMS Customization Settings dialog box (shown in Figure 6).

       

       Figure 6. LMS Advanced Customization Settings dialog box

       Note: Setting these options is not necessary for most users.

     • Never send Resume Data

       • By selecting this option, Resume Data, which includes the slide the user left off, the number of quiz attempts and their answers to each question, is not sent to the LMS.

         Note: This applies to all LMS Standards (AICC and SCORM), though does not have any effect on communicating to the Breeze Server.

     • Escape Version and Session ID

       • By selecting this option, Version and Session_ID fields are URL-encoded when sending to an AICC-HACP-compliant LMS.

         EXAMPLE: If Version is "3.5" and Session ID is "123,xyz" – when sent to the LMS it is sent as: Version=3%2e0&Session_ID=123%2Cxyz" when checked.

         Note: This only applies when communicating to any non-Breeze AICC-HACP-compliant LMS.

     • Don’t escape characters

       • List of characters that are NOT url-encoded when sent to the LMS for Version, Session_ID and Resume Data fields
6. Click OK to save settings and close the dialog box.

Configuring Additional Settings and Publishing the Breeze Presenter 5 file, Through the Publish Dialog Box

To prepare and create web-based files required for distribution and integration with an LMS, you must first publish the Breeze Presenter 5 project. With the Breeze Presenter Publish dialog box, you can modify additional settings before publishing the file. This article doesn’t describe specific settings, other than what may be required or interesting to track to Breeze 5 Server.

To publish your file and modify additional properties during the publish process:

1. From within PowerPoint, select Breeze > Publish.

2. You can select from either a local publish by selecting "My Computer," as shown in Figure 7 (not available for trial accounts), or by publishing to the Breeze Server. For additional information regarding a Breeze Server account, please contact Macromedia.

   

   Figure 7. Publish Settings dialog box(local publish)

If you are publishing to the local directory (My Computer):

1. Modify any additional settings, as appropriate, such as creating a ZIP file for easy distribution to managers or Information Technology staff.
2. Make sure you explicitly specify the folder to publish files.
3. Click Publish.

4. Browse to the folder where the files were published. In the default settings of simply creating an HTML file, launch, test and distribute both the resulting HTML and SWF (or ZIP) files that Breeze Presenter 5 generated during the publishing process.

   

   Figure 8. Publish Settings dialog box (Breeze Server publish)

If you are publishing to a Breeze Server:

1. You may need to click "Change Server" and enter a valid URL of your Breeze 5 Server.
2. Click Publish.

3. Log in to the Breeze Server.

   

   Figure 9. Breeze Server (Login)

4. Select the location where you want to upload the content and click Publish to This folder.

   

   Figure 10. Select location to publish

5. Enter an appropriate title for the content and click Finish.

   

   Figure 11. Complete Content Information form

6. When the Breeze Publish process is completed, click OK to clear the alert box.

   

   Figure 12. Content is now available for viewing/distribution

7. Test the content by clicking the URL in the URL for Viewing section.

   

   Figure 13. Testing content

8. When you are finished reviewing the content, close the window that contains the Breeze Presenter content to return to the Breeze/PowerPoint window.

9. Click the Reports tab and cycle through the various reports to see the tracking data that was returned to Breeze as you tested the content.

   

   Figure 14. Breeze reports

10. Click OK at the bottom of the Breeze form to close the dialog box and return to PowerPoint.

Now that you’ve created content and tested it within the Breeze environment, you’ll want to start experimenting with Breeze Training, which supports resume and bookmarking, as well as starting content in Pods in Macromedia Breeze-Live.

Conclusion

Breeze Presenter 5 is a great tool for building interactive training with PowerPoint and playing back over the web. With Breeze Presenter 5, you can easily integrate your presentations with standards-compliant LMS systems (such as AICC, SCORM 1.2, and SCORM 2004), and with other tools in the learning market. You can also send tracking data in tools that aren’t specifically output from Breeze Presenter 5.

For additional information and articles on Breeze Presenter 5 and LMS tracking or tools integration, stay tuned to the Breeze Presenter 5 Resource Center. Macromedia will post additional articles on this topic soon.

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