SCORM
SCORM. It’s not just the latest Internet acronym. It’s a powerful standard that enables the interoperability of learning content.
Short for Sharable Content Object Reference Model, the SCORM standard is spearheaded by the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative of the Department of Defense. Officially, SCORM “aims to foster creation of reusable learning content as ‘instructional objects’ within a common technical framework for computer and Web-based learning. SCORM describes that technical framework by providing a harmonized set of guidelines, specification and standards. Borrowing from work of other specification and standards bodies, ADL developed a model for creating and deploying e-Learning.”
In other words, SCORM-compliant content and systems can talk to one other. Why is this important? Why am I writing about SCORM here?
First, the easy answer: I’m writing about SCORM because Articulate Presenter is a SCORM-compliant authoring tool. Publish your e-learning content to SCORM and easily plug it in to Articulate Knowledge Portal or any SCORM-compliant Learning Management System (LMS).
SCORM is important because it lets Articulate Server or your LMS know how your users are interacting with your content. Without a common method of exchanging data, your content is just your content. It stands alone. Leveraging the SCORM standard, you can track who accesses your content when, whether they’ve completed a course, and more. SCORM is the framework that tells you about your learners as they navigate through your training content.
In short, you need a minimum of three elements to roll out a functioning e-learning program:
- Content.
- Learner management.
- A way to connect content with learner management.
Leveraging SCORM is one way to establish this connection.
For a good primer on learning standards, refer to Making Sense of Learning Specifications & Standards: A Decision Maker’s Guide to their Adoption, published by the Masie Center.
7 responses to “SCORM”
I’ve created e-learning content with articulate presenter 5. This content consists of articulate engage, quizmaker, and captivate modules.
I run the scorm test and it passed, but when I tried to upload it (the .zip file) in Moodle 1.6, it comes with the following error message “XML error: Invalid character at line 63”
I’ve tried to uploaded in the demo.moodle.org, in order to test it, but I got the same error message.
Any suggestions?
Thank you
[…] can learn more about SCORM in this blog entry. You can also download sample certification logs for Presenter and Quizmaker […]
I’m trying to have a quiz communicate which questions a user answered correctly and/or incorrectly to a LMS. How is this SCORM information passed to the LMS?
Hi Diane- you can see what data are sent to your LMS by Quizmaker here.
HI
We are using articulate presenter in our web site. The articulate doesn’t have any quiz or anything, it is just a lesson. We just need to track when the user has finished the articulate, and how much time spent in the lesson (articulate).
I made some research on the internet, and I found out that Articulate presenter is SCORM compliant. This means that we can track the user’s experience with articulate(such as tracking the user’s time spent on the
articulate) by just implementing SCORM API Javascript functions right? These functions can be implemented on the articulates themselves or does the web site that loads the articulate has to be also SCORM Compliant in order to track the user’s experience with the articulate?
Hi Hind- yes, our authoring tools are SCORM-certified. You would need to use them in conjunction with a SCORM-certified LMS or Articulate Online in order to track user activity. You can learn more about how to publish for LMS here.
Nice read, thanks Gabe.
I used to do a lot of independent learning interactions in flash, but recently scorm has been the main choice for implementing this stuff now. It’s a great way to get the same content across to many different learning platforms.
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