Question
When generating reports or viewing the TestTrack Debug logs we are noticing the cmi.interactions.x.learner_response will replace any Chinese characters with an underscore character. Please note the cmi.interactions.x.description will display Chinese characters without issue. 1. Is this how SCORM handles this language? 2. Is there a file that needs to be modified to allow Chinese characters to display correctly? 3. Is this a system localization issue?
Answer
SCORM specifies that learner responses (for multiple choice questions) are supposed to be of type "short identifier". A "short identifier" type is essentially only allowed to contain these characters: "letters, numbers - ( ) + . : = @ ; $ _ ! * ' %". It is technically supposed to be an identifier for the response and not the response itself. Since SCORM doesn't provide a "response description" (only a "question description"), we try to make the response identifier be as descriptive as possible. To that end, we use as much of the actual response text as we can, but when we detect an illegal character we simply replace it with an underscore. I hope this helps. We've been pushing for the next version of SCORM to contain an response description to alleviate problems like this one.