SCORM – what is it, where did it come from and where might it be going - John Lawton’s e-learning blog

SCORM - what is it, where did it come from and where might it be going?

It has defined the way e-learning has been created for almost a decade now, but what is it, where did it come from and where is it going?

When I formed Harlequin back in 1996, there weren't many companies out there producing what we know today as e-learning. There were CBT producers creating laser discs and the like, but not many people were producing learning solutions designed for delivery over the Net - after all - the Net was only in it's infancy, corporate networks were slow and prone to failure and portable data took the form of a 720Kb 3.5" floppy disk!

However, we still managed to produce a fair number of courses that could be delivered to the individual over corporate networks, using Mozilla or Internet Explorer and a very new to market product called Flash v 1.0. Back then the ability to deliver learning to the desktop without bringing down the network was a thing of wonderment. Pretty soon we were being commissioned by some fairly big firms and media groups to create leading edge learning for staff and client training.

The wave was rolling and we were riding high!

As time passed more and more companies popped up to exploit the burgeoning market. And as they did, the need for interoperability and compliance with standards became more and more pressing. Quite rightly clients would expect their investment in learning solutions to work across all their sites, and report into one central database as to student progress and achievement, irrespective of the solution's provider. But with all those providers and all those competing technologies, this was a bit of a pipedream.

To find a solution the industry turned to the only body that had hitherto expressed any form of standardisation based around CBT platforms such as laser discs and other delivery solutions - the Aviation Industry Computer Based Training Committee - AICC (http://www.aicc.org). The recommendations from the AICC outlined the importance of interoperability in both content and delivery management, but the specifications fell short of delivering a comprehensive global e-learning specification. But they at least acted as an important signpost, giving us all a lead and a direction.

Uncle Sam then got involved, teaming together the White House Office of Technology, the Department of Labor and the Department of Defense who launched the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL - http://www.adlnet.gov) - like I said, we didn't call it e-learning back then!

Just as we were all getting over our millennium hangovers and wondering whether anyone had noticed the absence of a millennium bug bringing down the world's computers, ADL released a framework document that was to form the foundation of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model version 1.0 (SCORM).

What's more, the term e-learning started to be banded about and was quickly jumped on by all and sundry as a term to describe anything from Powerpoint presentations to software simulations to electronic books to online video and much more besides.

So, we had a catchy name to give to what we'd been producing for the previous four years and we now had a specification to work towards. But SCORM 1.0 wasn't an implementable specification, it was more a statement of where SCORM would be heading. A year later we started to get a clearer notion of what was to come when ADL released SCORM 1.1. Nine months later and ADL gave birth to SCORM 1.2 which was a well formed specification that could be fully implemented.

This was a watershed moment - SCORM had arrived and hit the big time as industry leaders, including Harlequin, started to create courses and learning management systems that complied with the specification.

So what is SCORM? I hear you cry. Well, it's a standard or reference model that means the following things:

A compliant course or course element can be taken from one compliant learning management system (LMS) and plopped into any other compliant LMS and it will work, without modification. This means that vendors of courses can busy themselves creating libraries of generic courses, safe in the knowledge that they will work on any compliant platform. It also means that clients can feel reassured that their investment in content won't be wasted if they switch to some other LMS down the line.
Clients can track and manage the distribution of learning across the globe through a single centralised off-the-shelf LMS, which should mean an easier ride, a more stable platform and cost savings.
Tools can be developed to help in-house non-specialists create basic e-learning for internal use over the corporate LMS.
Courses can be constructed using elements from numerous other courses, binding together Sharable Content Objects (SCOs) into a single learning activity. This means that clients can create standard bits and pieces and include them in a number or all courses - such as a standard conclusion, or health and safety warning etc.

Eight years on and SCORM 1.2 is still a dominant force in the world of e-learning. It's been superseded since by SCORM 2004 1^st Edition, 2^nd Edition, 3^rd Edition and most recently on March 31^st 2009 SCORM 2004 4^th Edition. Each edition of the 2004 model, from the 2^nd onwards, has received significant adoption by an industry ever keen to offer greater functionality and upgrade paths and enticements to clients.

So which version of SCORM should you be looking for in your LMS and content vendor? Well at the very least SCORM 1.2. You'll be able to do pretty much everything that any of my clients have ever wanted to do, i.e. catalogue courses, target courses, track course usage and completion in the student population.

So does all this SCORM stuff work? Well, yes, usually. That is to say, the standard works, it tells us how to develop and how to make our courses work with any compliant LMS. The difficulty comes when the LMS doesn't fully comply. We've come across quite a few very large and prominent systems that claim compliance, but which failed to successfully track and record all the data our courses were providing. In these instances we've always been able to figure out work-arounds and work with the LMS vendor to have the LMS code corrected to comply with the SCORM specification. We always double-check our courses on test rig supplied by ADL and another from Rustici (http://www.scorm.com/scorm-solved/test-track)

So what's next for SCORM? Well, we've just been treated to 2004 4^th Edition but there is already talk of SCORM 2.0. ADL is stepping to one side and passing the baton on to the International Federation for Learning, Education and Training Systems Interoperability (LETSI http://www.letsi.org) who are actively consulting over just what should make it through to the son of SCORM! You can participate now, just hit the website and get involved.

So, should you wait for SCORM 2.0? No, it's a way off yet, it typically takes a couple of years before a standard emerges and then a year or two for vendors to fully adopt it, so don't get left behind. If you need student tracking, if you want to make use of libraries of learning content, if you want to let your own people make and share content, get yourself a SCORM compliant LMS or start renting space on one now. Then talk to us about creating great bespoke content that will really drive your business.

Of course, you don't have to go SCORM, there are other standards, and many of my clients, even vast multinational, have released pieces of e-learning to their staff and clients via a bog standard Web server without any tracking or notion of re-use. So if all you want to do is get learning out there, talk to us about how we can help and how we can save you money.

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