Update: The Output of Project Tin Can is Experience API.
Track Real-World Activities, Not Just Digital Ones
Traditional e-learning specs track digital actions like when a course has been completed. What happens when you want to verify that not only has someone learned a skill, but that they can perform it in the real world? What happens if you want to record a real-world (not necessarily e-learning) event such as classroom participation? The Tin Can API offers up methods to integrate real-world activities with digital learning.
A good example would be getting certified in CPR at your local community center. You can take the training on the computer, and even the written portion of the test on the computer, but there’s a real-world test where you physically perform CPR on various dummies. SCORM doesn’t offer a way to track the real-world part of this test, but the Tin Can API does.
Really, it’s up to you to get creative. Any real-world activity that can be logged by a person can be tracked by an LRS using the Tin Can API.
Other examples of real-world trackable activities:
- Any information that could be manually entered into a “transcript recorder”
- Someone attended a lecture
- Someone used scuba equipment
- Someone conversed in greek
- Classroom attendance
- Classroom participation
The simplest implementation of this is that an instructor notifies the LRS that the user has completed a certain activity.
A more complex example would be that the training device is (at least occasionally) connected to a network, and the user can log into the device with their credentials. When the real-world activity is performed, the device reports the results to the LRS. This device can be just about whatever you want it to be — a CPR dummy, a forklift, an ultrasound machine, etc. This is one area where we expect that you’ll get creative, and it’s definitely an area of innovation.
Questions/comments about tracking real-world activities and its implementation? Leave them below. Go back to the beginning of the comments to see where we started on tracking real-world activities with Project Tin Can Phase 1.
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