On December 31st, 2020, Adobe Systems will officially stop updating and distributing Adobe Flash. Several industries and businesses have been built around Flash technology — including gaming, education and video. To be ready for this change, the LMS team at the electrical training ALLIANCE began planning and revising system components over three years ago. Today we are excited to share that we are nearing the day where our system is fully Flash free.
When the announcement was made regarding the End-Of-Life for Flash, we encouraged our content collaborators to migrate any existing Flash content to new open formats. At the same time we were careful in making sure that the open format chosen, would be the one the industry would ultimately support. While 
HTML5 is clearly a supported method today, however even a few years ago the jury was still out on it. Once it was clear the industry was behind this method of describing web content, we were already ahead of the planning for making the necessary content revisions and conversions.
The first really visible changes were the new NEC, Blueprints and IBEW Constitution quiz questions. Following that, the team worked to convert all remaining Flash style quiz questions like the Drag and Drops, Identify a Spot, Formula Builder, Math Input and Connection Styles. Some of these were replaced with a different question format all-together.
The Formula Builder was replaced with a grouped Numerical Input style of question that also incorporates tolerance. The key to utilizing the tolerance correctly will still require students to pay close attention to the unit label. If milliamps are the unit being solved for, then the +/- 2.5% window may feel smaller to a student than when whole amps are to be solved for. The window relates to the whole number value. It is just something to keep in mind. To support the learner we added, among others, these statements within the lesson Introductory material wherever tolerance within a calculation would be present in the quiz:
- For all mathematical calculations, it is best to save rounding the answer to the last step of the calculation if at all. Rounding too soon may cause missed answers.
We also updated the Math Input questions with a modified Drag-and-Drop where there are a couple rules that need to be followed. Where these are located, we have placed this message in the Introductory information areas.
- All fractions should be reduced to their lowest terms. To answer the questions and receive credit, be sure to drag a number into each box. All boxes must have a number in them. Where an answer is a single digit, be sure to include a leading zero.
Example:
Correct:
Incorrect:
Here are a few stats regarding the changes made regarding the Quiz questions and CourseWare items
Flash-built Quiz Questions Details
- Over 7,000 Flash Questions converted
- All Flash removed from all active Courses as of Jan. 17th, 2020
- Archived and Closed courses will have their Flash removed before the end of April
Flash-built CourseWare Items
- Over 2,700 References/Flash Cards/Quick Quizzes/Glossary/Media Clips/Interactive Animations converted to-date
The Final Holdouts
- The Pre-Apprenticeship content is slated to have all Flash converted by May, 2020.
- Instrumentation Module 1 CourseWare is slated for completion of the conversion process by June, 2020.
Flash content will continue to be able to accessed by browsers on laptops for the entirety of 2020, (Dec. 31st EOL) however, making sure it is enable will continue to be a bit of a chore. For our use, the Flash sniffer will be removed from the homepage and placed at the location of where Flash still exists in the Courseware. The important thing to note is that if at the time of seeing this compatibility box on the LMS you do not see the lightning bolt, then you do not have flash either installed or enabled or both.
The new Homepage will be updated to acknowledge how all of these changes to the LMS will allow for more supported Browsers and Operating Systems:
The new Electrical Theory Simulator or ETS
The ETS has been updated in look and feel. The full explanation of that update was posted in this article. The excellent highlights are that the Simulator is now HTML5, is supported on nearly all platforms including touch capable tablets, and it no longer has all of the loading concerns present in high-powered simulators found on the web.
While saving and sharing files with the new sim is possible, any saved files from the legacy ETS will not load on the new.
Last thing:
Last thing on this post but certainly not the least important; While we were making these changes we did run into a few unexpected snags and we are very sorry for any inconvenience this caused for you and your students. Each time we were notified of the issue, the teams collaborated to resolve the issues as fast as possible and notified folks of it by placing a notice on the login pages. Thank you for you patience with the system during those moments. We know how important it is to have the system and quiz questions to be working correctly and accurately.
Thanks for Reading!