An online learning primer

First and foremost, the concept of delivering an assessment, quiz, activity or game in a structured way, means you typically want to provide tracking in some form or another. You want to be able to construct or author this content, deploy it, and see the progress of your students.

There is absolutely no shortage of acronyms used to describe learning environments, and the mechanisms that support them. Rather than hit you over the head with all of them, we'll focus on the more popular points in e-learning history below, which will highlight pivotal technology changes just over the last decade.

It is important to remember like all technology, it has to weather years of use. Do standards change as quick as they need to or should? Do advents of new technologies push the limits of standards?

Markets that drive this "space" include formal school systems like K-12, Higher Education, Corporate and Professional Training, Compliance, Do It Yourself (DIY), and gaming approaches. Each having its own specific angles that shape the standards. Technology itself, begins to open new doors and capabilities. But can everyone have the same experience between mobile and PC?

Below is a high level view of how specifications began to shape the concept of sharing content between systems. The goal was to have mechanisms to include your Lesson structure(s), titles, names and behaviors. Give content the ability to report to a common Application Programming Interface (API), and give teachers and students the ability to track progress, scores, and other data. Much of online training today had to fight through all same browser wars and standards issues normal websites did. But if you've had students, children, or friends attend college and they've encountered buttons hidden off screen, or issues running content on their newer computer - Chances are you're looking at vintage content commonly built for Internet Explorer 6.

Do you need SCORM/AICC in order to build e-learning?

Absolutely not. Today we see all the App Stores, Gaming platforms, and online social sites allowing and enabling people to openly share experiences, skills and trades. Expressing open opinions either positive or negative, has opened up a new brand that not everyone subscribes to. Privacy, and other concerns drive questions about who has access to this data, and what are they doing with it.

The goals and scope of your project dictate what options you have available to you. If you are building content to sell, most likely you'll want it to be as portable as possible. Other standards do exist, hoping to gain adoption. Competing strategies often blur what the right decision is.

Migrating Content, and Portals

You may have vintage content that is ripe for a overhaul. Can you just add something to make it talk SCORM 2004? Is taking old Adobe Flash content and generating 600+ PNG images to convert it to HTML the right thing to do? With high pixel per inch monitors and devices coming out, is that really a great long term strategy? All of these conversations are occurring in several war rooms around the world as people make efforts to modernize, migrate, and deploy their content on a variety of devices.

All to often the content gets the overhaul, but the Portal is still based on some tech from the mid 2000's. These systems still have statistics of 30-60% viewership using old browsers, and making sweeping changes like that may mean alienating, or off-putting a decent share of your customer base. Do you just make new system or adopt one? Can you entice your customers to migrate? Some cases the decision may not even be up to them, but their IT department (No joy). Most software development life cycles tend to last as much as 8-10 years. It's very challenging to try to take advantage of new web technologies while some of your customer base has to fail over to older tech. Currently, there is no shortage of frameworks, libraries often giving you rapid prototyping capabilities, but the may have a draw back of causing the content to become heavy and slow. As mentioned, even offering fail over technology for your older customer base takes its toll.

Canned Courseware

Off-the-shelf training has its place, just like a production car vs. one hand crafted in Italy. These tools commonly already come pre-bundled with page interactions, themes and other styles. How open are these systems are to customization? They commonly can offer e-learning standards built in. Its possible a slide show gets you part way to your goals. Be careful of the technology these systems use. They may (for example) use 100% flash and limit your portability when it comes time to deploy. They may also only deploy to Webkit/Mobile, and don't work in Internet Explorer or FireFox.

Cheating

This is a subject that comes up from time to time as exploits become more openly available. Please keep in mind that SCORM is a open API, freely accessible on the LMS. There are, however options to mitigate security. No measure can give you 100% peace of mind, so you need to consider backend reporting, and data forensics to truly be sure. Portals/platforms can take advantage of more modern options to limit external domains access, and direct interaction with the SCORM API from sources other than the Content Object. Most cheats are crude, and typically lack the level of detail a real Shareable Content Object can provide. Most Platforms independently track session time. So falsely reporting values is easily traceable. All to often, beyond just direct manipulation of the SCORM Runtime, students may evaluate assets, scripts, and external data which can also commonly direct them to the correct answer. Developers similarly need to take more steps to obscure the data so its not easily read like plain text - "Security through obscurity". Which typically is not recommend practice by a standards body like SCORM or AICC.

Just recently students have been expelled for key-logging teachers computers. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, road blocks or need solutions.

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Build vs Buy:

Advanced Distributed Learning actually has a certification for Learning Management Platforms. Since this application programming interface is in beta, it has not been submitted for this. that effort requires a 3rd party to review/analyze your software for roughly $4,000.

There are often several threads/posts online seeking a free SCORM Runtime API, and anyone who has done a bit of research has probably hasn't found anything. This is because of a number of reasons.

1. This can take a handful of developers up to 2 years to create
2. Finding developers familiar with end-to-end SCORM
3. The testing, support, and performance can cause many headaches
4. The availability of server-side code (PHP, ASP/ASP.NET, Ruby, JSP etc...)

This leaves you with other options. You subscribe and or license a LMS online, but aside from the remarks [the company] makes about their SCORM support you still should test the platform. This is why the SCOBot project was originally started. Many have partially implemented or watered down approaches to SCORM, and a quick import of a Unit Test can highlight any problem areas. Some even have poor API performance, which is due to round tripping the server on every SCORM request This can inflict 100-250ms lag on your Shareable content objects. (250ms x 10 calls = 2.5 Seconds!)
Then, your team gets to workout how to get the look and feel blended in their environment.

Your team may decide building your own is the way to go, but if you are in a deadline pinch, you simply won't have the time to fashion a SCORM Runtime API, and the necessary backend components (let alone the student frontend experience).

Build vs. Buy, the age-old question.

SCOBot SCORM 2004 Runtime Environment

This was built in conjunction with the SCOBot SCORM Content API which assists developers adding SCORM support to their Shareable Content Objects. Much of the core student attempt work is finished and as mentioned this API is in beta. if you currently hold a contract or are a non-profit you can request a copy.

• API Support for SCORM 2004 only
• Event triggers your LMS portal can 'listen' to
• Manages cached CMI (student attempt)
• Force terminate interval for SCOs that exit, but don't terminate
• 100% JavaScript Student Attempt Management
• Integrate with your backend language of choice
• Shared State Persistence namespace (in progress)
• Advanced Distributed Learning namespace (in progress)

The wrench signifies area of the API which are under construction. This is a pure JavaScript portion which manages the Student attempt. Code on your server will still need to be required to fully support SCORM 2004 unpacking of content, validation and mode, credit, student name, id, and other parameters required by the specification. Events as mentioned above are fired which you can listen to, along with API support for direct interaction. Since server-side logic commonly occurs within languages like PHP, ASP.NET, Ruby, etc, and other Databases like mySQL, SQL Server, Postgres, etc, it leaves these areas for your team to integrate.

If you are a commercial entity, and or have a paid service/access, and would like the source code, please make contact to discuss further.

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Let's Get Packing:

SCOBot Packager is a and Adobe AIR based application to assist you in packaging Shareable Content Objects. All to often you may have vendor based or internal content that needs to be edited and re-packaged for deployment. You may even have cases where your zipping and or hand editing of the XML manifest is causing a lot of grief getting it uploaded to the server.

This project is currently in beta, mainly because there are a ton of use cases surrounding not only the SCORM Specification, but often the wants and needs of people using these tools.

Repeatable steps can commonly be automated. When you identify something you have to keep doing over and over, that typically is costing time. Hand editing XML or copy and pasting snippets from the web can also lead to invalid syntax. This project takes into account the following:

• You may want to add base SCORM Communication into a HTML file.
• You may want the imsmanifest.xml to be created for you.
• Include schemas from the SCORM Specification.
• Removal of known bad file types which can bloat your package. Popular hidden files, source file types included.
• Push all the content into its own folder, away from the spec files.
• Include base LOM (Learning Object Metadata) for adding to a repo.
• Switch SCO or Asset, and detect launch files.
• Design your TOC structure with folders, then browse to the top, and let it do the rest.
• Also retain, or flatten the structure
• Pie-chart of file types packages so you know whats making up your package.
• Objectives, Flow-Control, Sequencing Rules (advanced features)

What do you mean 'Inject SCORM Communication'?

This process includes the SCOBot Content API, and a small subset of initialization with parameters to auto-score, pass and complete the student. This, after all is about 80-85% of all SCORM based activities. It's the "I was here" approach to presenting the student with some content and logging they saw it, and for how long.

Keep in mind that this is intended to be used in HTML files only, and you must manage whether you choose to inject this capability. The application will backup your original launch file.

What type of trial?

Typically 60 days. That allows any email feedback, concerns or requests to get addressed. Feedback is greatly appreciated, and understanding more about what features are popular helps. If you have an existing contract, or are providing feedback that can be extended.

Why would I even need this?

SCORM has a Content Aggregation and Resource packaging specification. In order to share your content with multiple LMS Platforms you need to follow these guidelines. Commonly, when hand creating these its time consuming and often ends in aggravation. The time it takes to upload, and test your package creates a churn. Sometimes, your content package can be invalidated simply by missing a step, or breaking the syntax. You may be re-packaging content, or re-sorting the table of contents.

When will a full release occur?

Right now this trial is helping answer that. This application has mainly been solving common repeatable tasks, and since the beta was opened up, its included about 30% feedback from the community.

This is all too much geek, can you just help me?

Absolutely, hit the contact page and send us a message and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

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