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🎓 Lesson 20: Publishing & the LMS

You've built it — now let's ship it. "Publishing" turns your author file into learner-ready HTML5, and "the LMS" is where most courses go to be delivered and tracked. This lesson demystifies the alphabet soup — SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, xAPI, AICC, cmi5 — explains completion and tracking in plain terms, and shows you how to test a package before it ever touches a real system.

📚 What You'll Learn

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Explain what "publish" means and name the publish targets (LMS, Web, Review 360, Reach 360, Video, Word)
  • Choose the right LMS standard — SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, xAPI, AICC, or cmi5
  • Set completion & tracking by slides viewed or by a quiz result, using the Result variable from Lesson 18
  • Produce a publish zip and test it in SCORM Cloud before uploading to a real LMS

⏱️ Estimated Time: 50 minutes

🎯 Project: Publish your course for LMS (SCORM), set completion by quiz result, and produce the zip.

In This Lesson

📦 What "Publish" Actually Means

Your .story file (Storyline) or your Rise project is the author version — the editable source, like a chef's recipe. Learners never touch it. Publishing is the moment you "plate the dish": Storyline and Rise take your project and generate a package of HTML5 — the modern web format that plays in any current browser, on desktop and mobile, with no plugin.

One thing to say clearly and put behind you: Flash is dead. Older e-learning used to publish Flash; Articulate's output today is HTML5, full stop. If you read a tutorial that talks about "Flash fallback," it's out of date. You publish HTML5, and it just works.

🧠 Mindset

SCORM, xAPI, AICC, cmi5 — the acronyms make publishing feel like a networking exam. It isn't. Every one of them answers the same simple question: "How should the course talk to the system that's tracking it?" You don't need to memorize their internals. You need to pick the one your LMS understands, and Storyline and Rise handle the rest. Nine times out of ten the answer is a single safe default — and you'll know which by the end of this lesson.

🎯 The Publish Targets

When you click Publish, you first choose where the course is going. Storyline and Rise offer the same core destinations:

graph TD A["✍️ Author file
(.story / Rise project)"] --> P["📦 Publish"] P --> LMS["🎓 LMS
SCORM / xAPI / AICC / cmi5"] P --> WEB["🌐 Web / HTML5
host anywhere"] P --> RV["💬 Review 360
gather feedback"] P --> RE["🚀 Reach 360
Articulate's own LMS"] P --> VID["🎬 Video
MP4 file"] P --> DOC["📄 Word
for offline review"] LMS --> T["📊 Learner + tracking
completion & score"] RE --> T style A fill:#fed7aa,color:#1e293b style P fill:#fde68a,color:#1e293b style LMS fill:#bfdbfe,color:#1e293b style WEB fill:#bbf7d0,color:#1e293b style RV fill:#f1f5f9,color:#1e293b style RE fill:#c7d2fe,color:#1e293b style VID fill:#f1f5f9,color:#1e293b style DOC fill:#f1f5f9,color:#1e293b style T fill:#fecaca,color:#1e293b

Figure 1 — One author file, many publish targets. Only LMS and Reach 360 deliver true completion tracking.

  • LMS — a package (SCORM/xAPI/AICC/cmi5) you upload to a Learning Management System. This is how organizations deliver and track training.
  • Web / HTML5 — plain files you can host on any website. Great for public content, but no built-in completion tracking.
  • Review 360 — a private link for stakeholders to comment on (the whole of Lesson 21).
  • Reach 360 Add-on — Articulate's own LMS, if you don't have one. Deliver and track without a separate system (seat-based, often billed separately).
  • Video — an MP4 of the course playing through. Handy for social or a screen, but it's a movie: no interactivity, no tracking.
  • Word — a document of your slides/notes for offline review or a printed storyboard.

🔤 LMS Standards Demystified

If you're publishing to an LMS, you must pick a standard — the "language" the course uses to report back. Here's each one in a sentence, then a side-by-side.

  • SCORM 1.2 — the old workhorse. Ancient, limited, and supported by virtually every LMS on earth. When in doubt, this is the safe default.
  • SCORM 2004 — a newer SCORM with better sequencing and richer status (it separates "completed" from "passed"). Widely supported, a bit fussier.
  • xAPI (Tin Can) — the modern standard. Tracks detailed "statements" ("Ray answered Q3 correctly") and can record learning that happens outside a traditional course. Needs an LMS or LRS that speaks it.
  • AICC — a legacy aviation-industry standard you'll only meet with older LMSs. Pick it only if your LMS specifically asks for it.
  • cmi5 — the newest option: xAPI's rich data with SCORM-like launch and completion rules baked in. The "best of both," where your LMS supports it.
Standard Era Tracking depth Pick it when…
SCORM 1.2Legacy, universalBasic (score, complete/pass)You want the safest bet and aren't sure what the LMS wants
SCORM 2004Older but commonBetter status & sequencingYou need "completed" and "passed" tracked separately
xAPI (Tin Can)ModernRich, detailed statementsYour LMS/LRS speaks xAPI and you want granular data
AICCLegacyBasicAn older LMS explicitly requires it
cmi5NewestRich data + clear rulesYour LMS supports cmi5 and you want modern tracking done right
💡 The honest rule of thumb: Ask your LMS admin what to use. If you can't, choose SCORM 1.2 — it works almost everywhere. Reach for xAPI or cmi5 only when someone who runs the LMS confirms it's supported and wanted. Fancy tracking you can't read is worse than simple tracking you can.

📊 Completion & Tracking

When you publish for an LMS, Storyline and Rise ask a make-or-break question: what counts as "complete"? There are two common answers.

  • By slides / content viewed — the learner completes when they've seen a number (or percentage) of slides or lessons. Good for informational content with no quiz.
  • By quiz result — the learner completes (or passes) based on a Result slide and its passing score. This is where Lesson 18 pays off: the tracked result variable is the number the LMS records.

Whatever you choose, the course sends the LMS a status — completed, passed, failed, and often a score — and the LMS stores it against the learner's record. That's the whole point of an LMS over plain web hosting: it remembers who did what.

⚠️ Pick your one tracked thing before you publish

You track one outcome per published course. If you set "complete by quiz result" but your course has three result slides, decide which one is the result (or roll them into a single final Result slide, as we noted in Lesson 18). Mismatches here are the number-one reason a course "won't mark complete" in an LMS — the tracking was pointed at the wrong thing.

⚙️ The Publish Dialog & the Zip

The publish dialog looks busier than it is. The choices that matter:

  • Title & folder — the course name learners see, and where the output lands.
  • Player (Storyline) — the frame around your slides: menu, next/prev, volume, the CC button, accessibility controls. Set this to match your course.
  • Format / standard — for LMS, the SCORM/xAPI/AICC/cmi5 choice from above; HTML5 output is a given.
  • Tracking — the completion rule from the previous section.

When it finishes, Storyline offers a Zip button. The zip is what you upload to an LMS — don't unzip it first; the LMS expects the whole package. (For a Web publish, you upload the unzipped folder to your web host instead.) Keep that zip; it's your shippable artifact.

✅ A tiny habit that saves headaches

Name your published zip with the course title and a version or date — fire-safety-v3-scorm12.zip. When you're three revisions deep and an LMS admin asks "which one did I upload?", you'll be very glad you did. More on versioning in Lesson 21.

🧪 Testing with SCORM Cloud

Here's a professional's secret: never trust an LMS package until you've tested it. A course can preview perfectly inside Storyline and still fail to report completion once it's a SCORM package — because previewing doesn't exercise the LMS conversation at all.

The standard tool for this is SCORM Cloud (by Rustici Software), a service built to test SCORM, xAPI, AICC, and cmi5 packages. You upload your zip, launch the course, click through it, and it shows you exactly what the course reported: did it register, did it send "complete," did the score come through? Fix problems there, before a real learner or LMS ever sees them. (It's commonly used with a free-ish testing tier, but availability and limits vary — check its current terms.)

💡 The publish-and-test loop

The reliable workflow: preview in the tool → publish a SCORM zip → test in SCORM Cloud → fix and republish if needed → upload to the real LMS → do one final smoke test there. It feels like extra steps the first time and saves you an embarrassing "the course won't mark complete" ticket every time after.

🎯 Try It: Publish for an LMS

🏋️ Activity: Produce a tracked SCORM package

Objective: Take a course (the quiz you built in Lesson 18 is perfect) all the way to a tested, LMS-ready zip.

Tool note: Both Rise and Storyline can publish for LMS on the trial Trial / Paid; Storyline is Windows-only Windows only. SCORM Cloud is a third-party site — you sign up separately.

Steps

  1. Open a finished course with a Result slide. Choose Publish → LMS. (⏱️ 3 min)
  2. Set the standard to SCORM 1.2 (the safe default). (⏱️ 2 min)
  3. Set Tracking to complete by quiz result, and confirm it points at the right Result slide and passing score. (⏱️ 4 min)
  4. Publish, then click Zip. Rename the zip with the course name and a version, e.g. mycourse-v1-scorm12.zip. (⏱️ 3 min)
  5. Sign up for SCORM Cloud, upload the zip, and launch the course. (⏱️ 6 min)
  6. Complete the quiz and confirm SCORM Cloud shows it as completed/passed with your score. If not, fix the tracking and republish. (⏱️ 7 min)
💡 Hint

If SCORM Cloud shows "incomplete" after you finished, the usual culprit is the tracking setting: it's set to slides-viewed but you expected quiz-result, or it's watching the wrong result slide. Re-open the publish settings, fix the completion rule, republish, and re-upload. Don't unzip the package before uploading.

✅ Activity Complete When…

  • You've published a SCORM 1.2 package with completion set by quiz result
  • You have a clearly named zip file ready to upload
  • SCORM Cloud launched the course and reported completion/pass and a score
  • You understand which standard you'd choose for a real LMS and why

🎯 Quick Quiz

Question 1: Which LMS standard is the safest default when you're not sure what your LMS supports?

Question 2: Why test a published package in SCORM Cloud before uploading to a real LMS?

📓 Learning Journal

Keep building your Learning Journal — it's where "I read that" becomes "I can do that." After this lesson, jot down:

  • Key concepts you learned
  • Things that clicked for you
  • Questions or confusion points to revisit
  • Ideas you want to try
  • Your progress and how you feel about learning this

✍️ This lesson's prompt: Where will your capstone course actually live — a specific LMS, Reach 360, a website, or Review 360 for feedback first? Based on that, which standard and completion rule will you use, and how will you test it? Write your publishing plan in a few sentences.

📝 Lesson Summary

🎓 Key Takeaways

  • Publishing turns your author file into learner-ready HTML5 (Flash is dead); targets are LMS, Web, Review 360, Reach 360, Video, and Word.
  • LMS standards: SCORM 1.2 (safe default, universal), SCORM 2004 (richer status), xAPI and cmi5 (modern, detailed tracking), AICC (legacy).
  • Set completion by slides viewed or by quiz result; the tracked Result variable (Lesson 18) is the number the LMS records — track one thing.
  • Upload the zip to an LMS, and always test it in SCORM Cloud first — previewing doesn't exercise LMS tracking.

🎉 What You've Accomplished

The scariest-looking part of e-learning — SCORM, xAPI, tracking, the LMS handoff — is now something you can explain and do. You can publish a course, choose a standard on purpose, set what "complete" means, and prove it works before anyone else sees it. That's the difference between "I made a course" and "I shipped one."

❓ Common Questions at This Stage

My course works on the web but won't track — why?

A plain Web/HTML5 publish has no LMS conversation, so there's nothing to track completion. If you need tracking, publish for LMS (or deliver via Reach 360) instead. Web publishing is for public content where you don't need a completion record.

Should I just always use xAPI since it's the most modern?

Only if your LMS or LRS actually supports and uses it. xAPI's rich data is wasted — or worse, breaks tracking — on a system that expects SCORM. Match the standard to the destination; ask the LMS admin, and default to SCORM 1.2 when you can't.

Do I upload the zip or the folder?

For an LMS, upload the zip as-is (the LMS unpacks it). For plain web hosting, upload the unzipped folder and point people at its index file. Mixing these up is a common first-time stumble.

🔭 Looking Ahead

Shipping is rarely a solo act. In Lesson 21, we cover collaboration and review: gathering feedback with Review 360, working on team folders, translating your course with XLIFF, and keeping your versions sane.

✅ Before the Next Lesson

  • Publish at least one course as a SCORM zip and test it in SCORM Cloud
  • Write this lesson's journal entry — your publishing plan for the capstone
  • Decide where your capstone will actually be delivered

📚 Additional Resources

🌟 Encouragement for the Journey

Remember when "SCORM" sounded like a secret password? Now it's just a dropdown you understand. You can take a course from an editable file to a tracked, tested package that reports completion to a real system. That's a full professional loop — and you just closed it.