SCORM Ain’t Dead: Where We Will Head
Categories: Ideas and Thoughts, Project Tin Can, SCORM, Standards Evolution
10 Mar 2011
Yesterday I talked about what is causing all the confusion coming out of ADL. Today I’ll talk about what it all means.
The Brand
To serve their many masters, the ADL leadership has decided to move away from the SCORM brand. From a business, marketing and adoption perspective, I don’t think it’s a good decision. SCORM is what people know and pay attention to in this industry. Moving away from it requires re-building a brand from scratch…never an easy thing to do. But, the government does what the government does…business, marketing and adoption aren’t really a bureaucracy’s strong suits….bosses, financiers and lawyers are their bigger concerns.
There’s actually really good news coming out of ADL though if you read the messages closely and understand the nuance. Here’s some translation of the messages:
“We’re doing more to support SCORM”
Supporting a standard is a lot of work. ADL maintains a SCORM help desk. They help vendors and organizations understand and adopt SCORM (especially within the government). They maintain a conformance test suite and associated certification programs. They publish best practice guides, example implementations and other documentation. This isn’t a tremendous amount of work, but it isn’t trivial either.
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SCORM Ain’t Dead: That Which Can’t Be Said
Categories: Ideas and Thoughts, Project Tin Can, SCORM, Standards Evolution
9 Mar 2011
Like so many organizations in and around Washington DC, ADL has a messaging problem.
Like so many organizations in and around Washington DC, ADL serves many masters.
Like so many organizations in and around Washington DC, ADL’s messages are best understood through the filter of a trained professional.
Call me SCORM’s James Carville, if you please.
The Noise
If you read every comment from ADL’s people and the responses to them, you get noise.
“We’re doing more to support SCORM”…
“SCORM isn’t being evolved”…
“We’re updating the SCORM books”…
“SCORM is going to ISO”…
“Introducing the Future Learning Experience Project”…
“Participate in Project Tin Can”…
“AICC CMI 5 is defining a new data model”…
“Check out LETSI RTWS”.
Without context, that looks like a big fat mess. It looks a bit directionless. But don’t despair, ye fans of SCORM. It’s actually laced with a lot of good news.
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The US Department of Labor just announced their solicitation for grant applications (SGA) and they called it this: “Employment and Training Administration Notice of Availability of Funds and Solicitation for Grant Applications for Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants Program“. Whoa.
I’m no political pundit, so here’s my short version: The federal government has set up a large grant program that includes the creation of Open Educational Resources, and they’ve required (on page 8 ) that the output conform with SCORM 2004.
There’s been a lot of “reaction” to the inclusion of SCORM, and by reaction, I mean many people are pretty angry about its inclusion. Most of that angst, though, originates from Rob Abel’s post on the IMS forums.
I will say this very plainly and directly: Rob’s post contains many inaccuracies and convenient explanations of the sort that you would see in a political campaign. While it is tempting to break down Rob’s post on a line by line basis, my ever-so-brief analysis of political campaigns (OK, I watched The West Wing) indicates that helps no one. I’ll limit my comments to a few:
- SCORM is not based on “outdated technology” as Rob claims repeatedly. The fundamental technologies employed by SCORM are Javascript and XML, and both are absolutely core to today’s web.
- “SCORM does not provide reliable interoperability or reuse.” Our SCORM Engine alone supports millions of learners and their use of interoperable content every year. Millions.
- “SCORM has no concept of or support for assessment.” False again. Please see the SCORM books for details on cmi.interactions, which are used widely for the reporting of learner assessment.
Lest you think I’m one sided here, there are truths in Rob’s post as well. SCORM is not well suited to “cohort-based” educational courses at this point, because it specifically governs single learner/host system communication. SCORM also elects (intentionally) to remain silent on countless subjects such as wider IT infrastructure and security.
Setting aside the technical errors in Rob’s post, my primary issue is with his misplaced vitriol. Rob has a vested interest in this debate. [Note: You could certainly argue that I do as well, given our domain name, but it's worth noting that we have equal support for AICC, and IMS CC has come up as a potential addition for us. We are definitively not the standards body.] As the leader of IMS, Rob has plenty of reasons to espouse the virtues of the standards they are creating. Further, I think Rob would be justified in complaining about the exclusion of IMS CC as a potential approach to reuse as part of the grant program. Michael Feldstein pointed this out in his balanced perspective on the issue.
SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge (the other main contender for a standard educational content interchange format) have substantially different affordances that are appropriate for substantially different use cases.
Michael Feldstein, in OER and Standards
My challenge to Rob and others in the conversation would be this. Argue the things that merit argument and take far greater care when you lambast other solutions.
- Does IMS CC provide some affordances that might be of use for a program such as this and should it be considered as a potential solution? I think it does.
- Should a directive such as this specify a single standard for clarity and simplicity? Or should other standards be options as well? I have no idea.
- Should SCORM, in its current state, be the only eLearning standard for the next 30 years? No way. Check out Project Tin Can and why SCORM needs to evolve, and tell us how it should evolve.
Ultimately, what’s the point here?
Elearning standards have a fundamental purpose: to remove the friction that separates learners from what they need to learn.
Rob has succeeded in inciting more than a few folks to criticize SCORM, when few of them have the background to determine the accuracy and reasonableness of his statements. A vitriolic argument like this does nothing but set us back in the goal of helping learners reach the learning they need.
SCORM can absolutely increase the utility of the Open Educational Resources produced by this grant program. IMS CC may well be able to as well. Let’s move this discussion past politically motivated and inaccurate accusations to something that helps people get their learning.
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Beyond the check box, a new e-book.
Categories: Ideas and Thoughts, SCORM, Standards Evolution
14 Oct 2009
SCORM used to be binary, either you had it or you didn’t. But that’s not right. Let’s face it, in reality there are some good SCORM implementations and some, well, really bad SCORM implementations. Our new e-book will help you decide which is which.
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The Top 5 Things Every Piece of SCORM Content Should Do At Runtime
Categories: SCORM, Using the Standards
7 Oct 2009
SCORM is a difficult problem, no doubt. As a content creator, there are countless things that you should do well in every piece of content if you want it to work in as many LMSs as possible.
Today, I’m focusing on particular technical choices at runtime, rather than packaging or “process”. (If process were part of this, I think all five things would be “test your content”.) Without further ado:
1. Find the SCORM API well
Once a piece of SCORM content is launched, its first task should be finding the SCORM API. Without this API, it can’t communicate with the LMS at all. (And a piece of SCORM content that can’t communicate with an LMS is just a webpage with annoying popup error messages…)
Finding the API isn’t a trivial task. It can be located in a parent frame or a parent window. This distinction is a crucial one, and isn’t tested well by the SCORM test suite. If your content adheres to the standard, it will perform well either in a frameset or in its own window. Take the time to get this right, or you’ll suffer the pain of fixing it when you send your content to the second LMS you want it to work in. (And for goodness sake, we’ve provided you with the code for an improved API discovery algorithm. Go ahead and use it. All of you.)
Lastly, if you can’t find the API, be sure to tell the user. The user needs to know right away that they won’t be getting credit for any of the work they’re doing.
2. Set your status right away
The first thing a piece of content should do with the API after it finds it is call GetValue(cmi.completion_status). [Note: This article is not about syntax. I'm intentionally avoiding committing to a version of SCORM.] If the current status is “not attempted”, it’s crucial that the content change it to “incomplete” right away. If the content fails to make this change, the LMS is obligated to consider the content complete on exit, even if it isn’t!
3. For the love of your users, use bookmarks
I suppose this is the least crucial of the elements in this missive, but please take care of your users! SCORM offers a simple concept of bookmarking (cmi.location). As your learner progresses through your content, set a bookmark periodically. Then, when the learner returns, be sure to give them the opportunity to return to where they left off. You would expect that level of courtesy in any piece of content you take, so provide it to your learners.
4. Record completion
The vast majority of SCORM content is taken at the encouragement of another. In a corporate environment, training is pushed on learners for compliance reasons. In the education world, professors often want to know that the learning material has been reviewed. In many ways, SCORM is largely about tracking the completion of training.
The only way the LMS knows that the learner has completed the training is if the content tells the LMS that the learner completed the training. Please tell the LMS.
5. Exit gracefully
top.window.close() is not the right way to exit from a piece of SCORM content. Is that clear? Sometimes, content is opened in its own window. If this is the case, then top.window.close() will probably be just fine. Sometimes, content is opened in a frameset. If this is the case, the world will come to an end.
Section 2.1.3 of the SCORM 2004 3rd & 4th Edition Specs puts it like this:
If the window in which the SCO was launched is a top-level window (i.e., the
window has no parent window, but it has an opener) then the SCO may attempt to
close the window after calling Terminate(“”).[...]
If the window is not a top-level window (i.e., the window has a parent window),
the SCO may not act on the parent window or any window in the chain of parents.
For example, a SCO is not allowed to attempt to close the top window, unless it is
its own window.
This is one to get right. As an LMS vendor, content that obliterates the entire LMS (by closing its window) is annoying both from a user experience perspective and from a data perspective (in poorly implemented LMSs). Put simply, don’t trash the room on your way out the door.
________
These five things alone won’t make your content conformant, but they will move you a long way down the path to creating interoperable, well liked content. So, what did I miss? Are these things the top 5?
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