Track Course Completions for Free Using Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer

Are you creating courses using Adobe Captivate and don’t yet have a learning management system (LMS) for tracking results? Did you know there is an alternative, FREE solution? Using the Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer, you can capture student scores and question-and-answer specifics, which can provide insight into your learners’ performance in the course. The solution is relatively easy to set up and will get you immediate results. What’s more, you can easily export the data and create your own reports in Excel. If that sounds like a lot of work, keep in mind that this is a FREE solution that can be implemented within a day (assuming you already have a web server), where the alternative likely means purchasing, implementing, configuring, and using an LMS.  You can retrieve the following data from the Quiz Results Analyzer:

  • For the course:
    • Total number of students who completed the course
    • Total number of students who passed the course
    • Total number of students who failed the course
  • For each student:
    • Total number of questions answered
    • Total number of questions answered correctly
    • Total number of questions answered incorrectly
    • Total number of questions skipped
    • Total score
    • Total number of attempts on the course/quiz
  • For each student, for each question (requires Interaction Data as mentioned in Step 2 below):
    • Question interaction ID
    • Question interaction type (multiple choice or true/false, for example)
    • The correct answer
    • The answer the student provided
    • Whether the student got the question correct or incorrect
    • The weight of the question
    • Total number of attempts on the question
Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer – Course Data in Bar Graph Form

Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer – Course Data in Bar Graph Form

Assuming you intend to host your published Captivate courses somewhere on your website, you’ll have to take a few steps to prepare both your courses and your web server for reporting results that can be used with the Quiz Results Analyzer. Follow the steps below, and you’ll be up and running in no time.

Step 1 – Readying Your Web Server

Adobe provides scripts (PHP files) that work as-is with the Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer. To use these scripts, you must install PHP on the web server where the course will be hosted. PHP is a server-side scripting language, and in this case, it’s what allows the hosted course to capture and save your learners’ results. If you’re unsure about what this all means, talk to your IT department or web hosting provider.

Once you have PHP installed on your web server, locate the two PHP scripts (files) installed with Captivate. The files are named InternalServerReporting.php and internalserverread.php and can be found within the Captivate installation directory, in the Templates\Publish folder. On my 64-bit Windows 7 machine with Captivate 8, this isC:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 8 x64\Templates\Publish. Make a copy of these files (keep the same names) and place them in the root web folder on your PHP-enabled web server.

Step 2 – Setting up Your Captivate Publishing Preferences

Now that you have your web server set up, you and your Captivate developers need to configure your Captivate publishing preferences so the published courses use the PHP script to process the quiz results. Within Captivate, select File > Publish Settings… from the top menu. When the Preferences window opens, select Quiz > Reporting from the left menu, and complete the following:

  1. Check the Enable reporting for this project
  2. Select Internal Server from the LMS
  3. Click the Configure When the Configure Internal Server Settings window opens, specify the following:
    • Server – this is the web address of the script you uploaded to your web server in Step 1. For example, if you placed the script in the root web folder, you’ll enter the following in this field: http://<www.yourwebsite.com>/InternalServerReporting.php
    • Company/Institute, Department, and Course – these fields are used to organize the data on your server. On your web server, a new Captivate Results folder will be created (when the first results are submitted). It will store your course results and contain a hierarchy of folders based on the information provided in these fields. In other words, for each course you publish using these internal server settings, results will be published to the following folder location on your Web server: Captivate Results/Company/Department/Course, based on the valued entered in these fields. Keep this in mind when publishing your courses. You will likely want to change these values for each course you publish.
  4. Click Save in the Configure Internal Server Settings window to return to your quiz reporting preferences. Specify additional reporting preferences as you traditionally would, ensuring to select the Interaction Data checkbox if you want information captured from each question in your course’s quiz. When you’re done configuring your reporting preferences, click OK.

CaptivateQuizResultsPreferences

You can now publish your course and upload the published course files to your web server. These courses will now capture course quiz results and question details for each user that completes the course.

Step 3 – Accessing and Viewing Course Results

To access and view your course results, you’ll need to first install Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer.  It is automatically installed with Adobe Captivate, but if you don’t have Captivate, it is a free download.  Once you have it installed, launch the Quiz Results Analyzer, and configure it to pull your quiz results from the server as follows:

  1. Select Options > Preferences from the top-right corner of the application.
  2. Click the Add button to add the internal server you prepared in Step 1.
  3. Specify a Name for your server. This is just a recognizable name for you, so you know from where you’re retrieving results. In the Link field, supply the server address you used in your Captivate Internal Server settings in Step 2, but this time, point to the php file. For example: http://<www.yourwebsite.com>/internalserverread.php.

Now that you have the Quiz Results Analyzer configured, you can start accessing and viewing your results!

Step 4 – Using the Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer to View Results

When you’re ready to start viewing your quiz results, launch the Quiz Results Analyzer, and select the internal server you named in Step 3 from the Source drop-down list. Then click the Get Results button. When the results have been populated, use the Organization, Department, and Course drop-down lists to navigate to the course for which you want to view results.  Then click Generate Report.

The data contained in the report is interactive. Click a row in the resulting table, or click a bar on the graph, and you’ll drill further into the information that is available.

Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer – Question Data for a Single Student

Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer – Question Data for a Single Student

The Quiz Results Analyzer may not provide all of the insight and statistics you want out of your Captivate courses, but remember, you can export your results to a CSV format that you can manipulate in Excel.

That’s it! While there may be several steps to this set-up process, it isn’t as time consuming as it may seem. And remember… it’s FREE! As a bit of warning, while Adobe provides the Quiz Results Analyzer software and the scripts that can be used with it, they do not appear to support the tool. Forum posts and questions are largely unanswered when they revolve around the Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer. This information is compiled from several forums and blogs, combined with trial and error in my own experiences setting it up. Be sure to work with your web hosting provider or your IT department to ensure a successful implementation. When it is up and running, the Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer can provide a great alternative for Captivate users who want to track course results without using an LMS.

Tanya Seidel
Artisan E-Learning

8 Responses to “Track Course Completions for Free Using Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer

  • This is fantastic information, thank you. Is there some sort of student ID that is generated to differentiate between the learners?

    • Thanks for your message Scott! Unfortunately, the Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer does not use a student ID of any kind to capture the information. It relies on the student’s email address, but this email address is not presented in the results. Instead, the Results Analyzer displays scores and results by student name. If a student uses the same email ID to retake the course or quiz at another time, it is recognized and reflected as an additional attempt for that individual. In other words, a student taking the course or quiz multiple times, but who always uses the same email address to submit his or her results, will only be reflected in the results once, showing the latest score and answers provided, but including the number of attempts or number of times the course/quiz was completed. I hope this helps! Thanks again for your message.

  • Hi, not sure if this discussion is still being monitored…
    I’ve followed the instructions here, which are excellent, but I get an error message from Adobe Captivate Quiz Analyzer: “No companies found in the current user account”, although I’ve entered all the information in the Captivate 8 internal server configuration setting. Must the two php files be in the same directory as the captivate 8 file? Or is there something else I am missing. Your comments will be greatly appreciated.
    Regards,

    • Hey Daniel, I am getting the same error as you. Also, when the student enters their name and email and click “Send” (when posting results), there is an error saying, “Unknown Error” – did you manage to figure out what was wrong or how to fix it?

      Or can anyone else please help? 🙂

      • honestly speaking i gave up on the adobe captive quiz analyzer. i tried, consulted, coerced but to no avail. It doesn’t seem that Adobe is actually supporting this app in any way, but i could be wrong.

        • Thanks for your reply Daniel! I think you’re right, doesn’t seem to be alot of resources. It would be amazing to have this process work correctly – but it’s almost too good to be true. 🙂 Thanks again!

    • Micha Brans
      9 years ago

      I found and fixed most of the problem:
      1. In the instructions it says to enter “http:///InternalServerReporting.php” in the settings, however that file is on your hard drive as internalServerReporting.php, so the first ‘i’ is lower case not upper case.
      2. In the instructions from Adobe and from the server logs, I could find that the file needs to be able to create folders and write files on your webserver….. Not really a good thing to do I would say, however if you create the right folders yourself and only set 777 permissions to the last folder, where the results are stored, it works. In the same folder where you have the 2 files stored, you need to create the following path CaptivateResults[Company From Settings][Department From Settings]
      [Course From Settings] and only give this last folder 777.
      3. The only thing I could not fix yet is the analizer software. It does see the company name but not the department or course. also I can not download the report. HOWEVER if you just download the complete folder CaptivateResults with content to your local drive, you can open it from there and now you can create the report.

      Probably not the best solution but for sure a workaround, I hope you can use this.

      • hey micha!
        i did everything you’ve explained so i can finally see at least the company and and dept. in the quiz analyzer but somehow none of my results are created in the first place. although i have set 777 to the last folder, nothing happens there… any ideas what might be wrong?

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