How to set up learner comments for your learning activity

In Activate LMS it is possible for learners to see their comments in a log and download it as a .pdf for future use. These comments just needs to be saved properly as learner comments. Activate LMS automatically supports and tracks the use of SCORM's learner comments, but you need to do some tinkering in your elearning editor to enable learner comments when creating your activity. When Activate LMS has tracked and saved a learners comment, the learner can see a small log icon beneath the learning activity's image:

In this example I will be using the editor Articulate Storyline. This can of course be done in other editors. All you need is access to execute a script that saves a text entry from a text box in a accessable variable. It can sound and look a bit daunting but it is actually quite doable, so hang on tight and now lets go set up some learner comments!

1. Firstly I've created a basic project in Articulate Storyline consisting of a single slide with a text box data entry (this can be added through Insert > Input > Data Entry > Text Entry) and a button.
   
   
   
   
2. Now we can name the variable of the users text input. This can done by clicking on Set TextEntry Equal to the type value When the control loses focus.
   
   
   
   
3. Now you can set the name of the variable. As default the variable will be call "TextEntry", but this name says nothing about the text we will save in it, so it's good practice to call your variable something more saying like "TextToSaveForLearnersComment". Please note that variables are case-sensitive. Click OK when you have come up with a nice and covering variable name :-)
   
   
   
   
4. After setting up the basic components of the slide, you can now add a trigger to the button that saves the text input from the user to the learner comments. This can be done by clicking the buttons related Add Trigger.
   
   
   
   
   
5. In this Trigger Wizard menu you can setup your trigger. In this example I have specified the following options:
   
   
   
   
6. Before closing the wizard you should set the script that should run when you click the specified button. You can click on three dots (...) next to script. In this menu you can add your script.
   
   
   
   Here's a copy-friendly snippet for you to copy-paste into the editor:
   
   var player = GetPlayer();
   var storylineVar = player.GetVar("PUT_THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_VARIABLE_HERE");
   SCORM_CallLMSSetValue('cmi.comments', storylineVar);
   
   You need to put your variables name inside the parenthesises after GetVar and put it inside the quotations marks. The code above applies for SCORM 1.2, in SCORM2004 you need to replace the last line with following code:
   
   SCORM2004_CallSetValue('cmi.comments_from_learner.0.comment', "PUT_THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_VARIABLE_HERE");
   
   
7. Click OK when you're done customising the script.
   
   
8. Now the setup should complete and you can upload your SCORM package to Activate LMS and test out the learners comment feature. If you're unfamiliar with uploading SCORM packages to Activate LMS you can check out this article.
   
   
9. After uploading your new SCORM package you can try it out. Please note that the learner comment log will not appear until you have submitted some data. After opening the learning activity you can now type some text in the text field and finish by clicking the button which you've attached the script to.
   
   
10. After saving your learners comment you can now see the learners comment icon beneath your learning activity's image.
    
    
    
    
11. You can now click the icon. It is now possible to do two things with your learners comments:
    1. Edit your current learners comments by editing the text and finishing by clicking Save.
    2. Download a .pdf with an overview of your learners comments.