Tag: perception

Perception 4.3 meets an Oracle 10g bug: Unsupported network datatype or representation

Posted on December 6, 2007 by ellen

Last January, I installed a test instance of Questionmark’s Perception server, version 4.2, in preparation for upgrading our version 3.4 Perception server. At the time, we were using Oracle version 9i. Once installed, our testing went well, and we did not notice any significant problems.

In July, we finally got around to doing the actual upgrade, and decided to upgrade the database to Oracle 10g at the same time. The installation and conversion of our version 3.4 data went very smoothly. Everything ran well for about a week. Then things began to go wrong. When we would open the Authoring Manager, it would refuse to show us any assessments (“assessments can’t be found”.) Then it would tell us administrators couldn’t be found. After a few days, the assessments disappeared from the Perception Server as well, meaning users could no longer take them. After trying numerous fixes, we reverted to a recent backup of the database from a couple of days before, and the problem disappeared. The one Oracle error that both Perception Server and Authoring Manager were giving was “ORA-03115: unsupported network datatype or representation.”

Limiting number of tries on Perception Quizzes under SCORM control

Posted on January 30, 2007 by ellen

When Questionmark Perception is launched from an LMS using SCORM, Perception’s built-in user management system can’t be used. Perception receives user data from the LMS, and although it stores that data with the results of the quizzes, it can’t use the data for purposes of scheduling and limiting access to quizzes.

Unfortunately, our LMS, SumTotal 6.5, does not have a good way to limit attempts on a learning activity either. There is a rather inflexible option: If you set any learning activity to “allow access upon completion,” after the activity has been completed once, the user will only be able to launch the activity for purposes of browsing, but never take it again for credit. In other words, the user can not enroll again.

This isn’t always the best solution. For example, we wanted to allow two or three tries, depending on the quiz, and we never allow users to browse old quizzes.

Safari won’t launch a Perception Quiz from the LMS, when all other browsers will

Posted on September 24, 2006 by ellen

Our SumTotal (Docent) 6.5 learning management system uses SCORM to launch learning activities and quizzes. We had a case where several Perception Quizzes would not launch using Safari, but any other browser did launch them.

A better Likert scale question template for Perception quizzes

Posted on September 9, 2006 by ellen

The out-of the-box Likert Scale question created by Perception is really just a slightly modified multiple choice question. The choices are arranged vertically, as shown in the example screen shot below.

I prefer Likert Scale choices to be displayed horizontally as shown in the image below.

Getting Questionmark Perception to work with Docent 6.5

Posted on October 29, 2005 by ellen

Making Questionmark Perception quizzes SCORM-compliant, AND compatible with Docent 6.5 LMS was a big piece of our recent Docent implementation project, since we had many legacy quizzes.

Here are the steps involved:

Install QMWise (available from Questionmark.com) on the Perception server.
Install Content packager (available from Questionmark.com) on your workstation
( tip, do NOT have SSL enabled on the server – it blocks QMWise communication if the certificate is slightly misnamed).
Read the Knowledgebase article “How can I call Perception from a SCORM-compliant Learning Management System?”
Get the files scorm.pip and perceptionSCO.htm from Questionmark.com.