SCORM Cloud relies on a few third-party systems to do what it does. Yesterday, a problem was exposed by an outage of one of these systems and SCORM Cloud services were unreliable for about an hour.

Typically if a server is unavailable, it will send a “server unavailable” message that we handle appropriately and with no SCORM Cloud outages. Yesterday, the server wasn’t sending anything to SCORM Cloud, not even a “server unavailable” message.

We didn’t have anything in place to handle this particular instance, so SCORM Cloud kept trying to connect to the server, opening too many connections and causing failures.

We now have code in place so that if the server ever stops responding again, SCORM Cloud will handle it as a “server unavailable” situation — one that we can handle with no problems at all.

Our developers don’t have any direct control over how others handle their servers and systems so we can’t directly prevent errors. What we can do (and what we’ve done) is make it so that SCORM Cloud is able to handle a wider range of errors. This translates to more SCORM Cloud up time.

If you ever need to see the status of SCORM Cloud (including up time data,) check out our Cloud Status page. You can also follow @SCORMCloud on Twitter for SCORM Cloud news and updates.

First up in 2012 is adding some new features to SCORM Cloud.

SCORM Cloud does many things, but at its core, it delivers training. Until now, you could import courses, share them with learners and track the results. SCORM Cloud even lets you send your content to another LMS (but that’s another story).

We thought it would be kind of cool to include a couple of tools that let you add SCORM content within SCORM Cloud. Check out what we came up with:

ScoTube- -Want to use video in your training? ScoTube automagically wraps your video with all of the SCORMy stuff needed. You can use a video from YouTube, or upload your own video file. Either way, one click delivers a SCORM course that’s ready to play in SCORM Cloud. We’ll even let you export it to use outside of SCORM Cloud, if you really want to.

Quizzage- Need an easy-to-use tool that creates simple quizzes and surveys? Quizzage is just that. Create your questions (there are 5 types to pick from), set your scoring and learner feedback options, and you’re ready to go. You can deliver your quizzes right from SCORM Cloud. Or even export them from SCORM Cloud if you must.

So far, I have created quite a training curriculum for my friends and family- “How to Wash a Cat”, “Cha Cha Slide 101”, “Playing the Ukelele” and “Mastering Flip Turns”. Feel free to check them- just click on any of the titles, to go right to the training.

I also thought it might be fun to build a quiz to test your knowledge on some of the cool things SCORM Cloud can do. Try it here and see what you know.

Want to give it a try? Just go over to SCORM Cloud. In less than 5 minutes you can build your courses and even share them with your learners. And since it’s through SCORM Cloud, you can even build your own and try it out for free.

Versions of Claimed SCORM Support in the eLearning Atlas vs. Use in SCORM Cloud:


When I last reviewed our SCORM Cloud stats, I noticed just how closely the actual use of different standards mapped to the claimed support. Obviously SCORM 1.2 is the most popular and has nearly identical use in our SCORM Cloud. However, many may claim to support SCORM 2004 4th edition, but few actually generate courses using it. I realize SCORM 2004 isn’t always easy and it can create some confusion, could this be the reason for the difference? Maybe the 3rd edition was widely implemented and some became weary of another upgrade. It’s also possible that some of the 4th edition experts out there have no need to test content on SCORM Cloud. I’ll continue to pick at this, but the exact answer is unknown to me.

Whatever the reason for 4th’s variance, it’s comforting to know that the standards we mapped in the eLearning Atlas closely match the real-world behavior in the SCORM Cloud. As we continue to develop both tools, what other correlations or discrepancies do you expect to find?

BLTI provides a simple way for LMS users to incorporate remote tools into their system. Think of it as a super-simple plugin architecture.

Used mostly by academically-oriented LMS’s, BLTI provides a way to authenticate users from an LMS into a tool offered by another vendor. Simple Outcomes is an informal extension to BLTI that allows for very basic results reporting from the tool back to the LMS.

People love SCORM Cloud for it’s ease of integration, but we’re constantly looking for ways to make integration even simpler. BLTI is step along that path.

SCORM is underutilized in the education market. This is partly because academically-oriented LMSs have historically had weak SCORM support and partly because the tracking that SCORM provides hasn’t always been valued in academic circles the way it is in corporate circles.

With greater emphasis on assessment and measurement in education, we believe that detailed tracking will be increasingly important. We hope SCORM Cloud’s BLTI integration will help bring the power of SCORM and the vast quantity of SCORM conformant content to this important segment.

The BLTI export can be found in the SCORM Dispatch section of Cloud. To expose a SCORM course as a BLTI tool, simply create a Dispatch, click on the BLTI button and then copy the provided credentials into your BLTI LMS. That’s it. Your LMS will now be able to launch the SCORM Course. SCORM Cloud will maintain all of the detailed tracking data on the course and report back a score to the host LMS.

Special thanks to Dr. Chuck for helping us put this together. To see a list of other products that support BLTI, check out the LTI list on eLearning Atlas.

“we made this chart and it just looked dumb so we changed it”

-Mike Rustici

There’s a new TV show “Around the World in 80 Ways” that challenges 2 guys to use 80 different modes of transportation to circumnavigate the globe. We’re not trying to do that, but we do want to see our SCORM solutions adopted around the world and eliminate the hurdles that come with internationalization.

Shortly after we launched SCORM Cloud, we began to get questions from our friends in Europe about whether we were Safe Harbor compliant. As the requests grew, it prompted us to do 2 things- find out what the heck the European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection is and why we need to be safe from it, and to take a closer look at where our customers are located. Here’s what we found:

In a nutshell, Safe Harbor certification ensures that U.S. companies comply with the EU directives on the protection of personal data. We take data security and privacy very seriously- regardless of where our users are, so going through the certification process was a no-brainer. And as of last week we are officially certified as Safe Harbor compliant. For more details, check out our privacy policy and Safe Harbor compliance.

Looking at where our customers are and the ways we support them uncovered some interesting stats. We were surprised to have so many friends around the world- 82 countries represented. Below is a breakdown of where most of our SCORM Cloud users live.

Supporting a global customer base can be challenging- especially when you consider language complexities. We recently updated our website to support 17 translations, and our SCORM Engine now supports over 16 languages. Chinese? Yep- 2 versions.

So, the world of SCORM continues to grow and the complexities on delivering our services grow too. We’re up for the challenge and invite you to join us in our travels.

A tool that authenticates students, connects them to a topic, as well as each other, and provides the tools to efficiently deliver, track and assess the learning process.

- (Think you can do it better using only 140 characters? Step up and leave a comment…)

We’ve been pondering different applications and how they apply to that definition. And I can’t stop coming back to Facebook as a great candidate for an LMS of the future.

A tool that authenticates students…

 
…connects them to a topic…

 
…as well as each other…

 

This is where SCORM Cloud comes in. Courses could be hosted on SCORM Cloud and delivered via Facebook.

…and provides the tools to efficiently deliver, track and assess the learning process.

Assessments and tracking could also be integrated:
 

 

Thinking about what could be is something we do a lot… Lately several of us have often discussed what SCORM Cloud + Facebook could be. I thought it’d be a good idea to expand the discussion and bring our followers into the mix.

Apps in Facebook are nothing new, and they’re the future of the platform:

The next five years will be defined by apps and the depth of social engagement.

-Mark Zuckerberg at F8 2011

The social learning platform has created thousands of successful virtual farms and Vills. While many of the popular apps currently on Facebook are games, the Facebook population seems to be underutilized for eLearning. Students and Facebook have a healthy relationship — the site’s popularity was born from college students. I’m willing to make the argument that the blend of eLearning and the Facebook environment would be a useful marriage.

Facebook advantages:

• 800+ million users (and growing)
• Easy to manage people and groups
• Users are loyal, familiar and comfortable with Facebook
• Streamlined registration and management process
• Frequent log-ins, easily accessible across platforms and devices
• Every month, more than 500 million people use an app on Facebook or experience Facebook Platform on other websites
• More than 7 million apps and websites are integrated with Facebook

By using Facebook to facilitate learning with students and instructors, developers could create a fast and intuitive way to group students and deploy courses. Learning within Facebook provides a platform students are comfortable and familiar with. Relationships formed via a Facebook-based experience could continue past the life of the course, creating a more genuine social experience than traditional eLearning has been able to give. The possibilities of a Learning App within Facebook are exciting to imagine and one I think could become the next big movement of eLearning.

Arguably, this rush to manage learners within Facebook will start soon, and I’m excited to see it begin. We’ve built our SCORM Cloud to be flexible and adaptable with this scenario in mind. We’ve seen several integrations of our SCORM Cloud. So far it has been blended into Moodle, Sakai, Dokeos, Ilias, WordPress and Google Apps. Instead of reinventing the learning platform, just plug our SCORM Cloud into Facebook and move on.

Facebook is the next step, and one we’re excited to see someone take. Our SCORM Cloud can relieve the pain of hosting content, managing courses, tracking assessments and reporting grades. Facebook will manage students — all a developer needs to do is plug the two together. We’re open to ideas on how we can make this process easier.

Group discussions, wall posts, notifications, real-time chat with classmates, leader boards… the Facebook platform offers plenty of elements that can be combined to create something cool. What could be within this solution keeps my mind racing. I hope that some momentum for this develops soon.

So the logical question is, “If an e-learning Facebook app is such a great idea, why not do it yourself?” We have built the toolkit that can make this app possible… we’ve got a lot of development projects in cue. We’ve made it obvious we’re hiring, great ideas like SCORM Cloud + Facebook are why. If this sounds cool and you’d like to jump in and create a Facebook integration, go for it. Where it goes from here is up to you. Are you willing to take the leap and become the first to navigate these waters?

We know this process takes time and effort. We’re willing to lend a hand, let’s discuss what that could look like by dropping a comment. If you’re interested in working with us to make this happen, email me — chris.tompkins@scorm.com.

Some images from: benstein & FindYourSearch

If you ever notice a security problem in any of our software, please let us know so we can get it patched up. Also, all of the SCORM Cloud Apps we’ve developed are open source and publicly available on Github for you to enhance…don’t feel like you need to wait for us if there is something you need.

Details of the vulnerability.

Moodle has long been a stalwart open source LMS. In fact, they just celebrated their 9th birthday. In that time their platform has matured and progressed from version 1.0 to the most recent release which now starts with a ‘2’.

When we launched SCORM Cloud, we pre-built a few integrations we thought made sense, including a Moodle mod. Well that was back in the early days of 1.9.  For those running 1.9, the SCORM Cloud mod allows you to play SCORM 2004 content on your Moodle site.

In v2.0 Moodle revised their plugin architecture. Until now, there wasn’t a mod for the 2.0 platform that could support SCORM 2004.

You asked (and asked again), and we listened. The updated SCORM Cloud mod for Moodle 2.x is ready and now available. Follow the steps listed here to get started.

Can’t stand the wait next time? The SCORM Cloud integrations we’ve created are all open source and freely available on Github.

The Challenge

LINGOs is a consortium of over 60 international humanitarian relief, development, conservation and health organizations. They provide the latest learning technologies and courses from industry leading partners so their non-profit members can increase the skill levels of their employees, thereby increasing the impact of their programs.

While LINGOs provides a robust, hosted platform to administer the courseware, some members have additional needs that require using other LMS solutions. For those organizations, LINGOs needed a way to deliver their course library to the member’s external LMS, while still controlling access to the content.

Enter SCORM Cloud with Dispatch

LINGOs partnered with Rustici Software to manage the delivery of the content. By using the Dispatch feature within SCORM Cloud, LINGOs member organizations can access the LINGOs course library within their own SCORM-compliant LMS while LINGOs continues to retain control of distribution and access to the content.

“Rustici Software has been tremendously supportive of LINGOs and SCORM Dispatch has been an invaluable tool for us. It has enabled us to maintain control of the intellectual property that has been generously made available by our corporate partners, while allowing our members to make independent decisions regarding the LMS that best suits their needs. SCORM Dispatch allows us to accommodate those decisions without costly and time-intensive custom interfaces.” — Eric Berg, Executive Director, LINGOs

Get the full story on LINGOs and see how their members are using SCORM Dispatch to enhance their learning initiatives.

Click here to see how SCORM Cloud and Dispatch can help you manage your content distribution.