SCORM And Monkeys By The Barrel

I am currently re-acquainting myself with some learning management systems and thus have been discussing  the SCORM interoperability standard with several of my cyberfriends. I sat down today with intent to  blog about SCORM.
However, as was the case with my SharePoint-as-DAM blog a few weeks back, I already had provided a pretty good description of SCORM on a Linkedin discussion (for Masters of Digital Assets) in response to a question that was  posted by Michael Moon.

So in the spirit of content reuse, here is my response to  Michael’s SCORM  question:

My previous company had a fairly large presence in the educational market, thus I was involved in several projects in which we utilized SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK) to deliver SCORM-compliant learning object. SLK is an open-source add-on to SharePoint. SLK will store and deliver SCORM-compliant learning content, and permits  the storage of assessment data.


However, if a learning object is properly described it will (read: should’) work with any learning management system that is SCORM-compliant. Most learning management systems (Blackboard, Moodle..) will provide SCORM support. 

I recently  found this site. I don’t know anything about the software that the company is peddling, but the site does offer a pretty good  SCORM overview. 

There’s a number of authoring tools that enable the creation of SCORM content. Additionally there are some third-party tools that will allow a user to make SCORM packages from file formats such as PowerPoint, or Word.

I recently worked on a project where I developed the SCORM-compliant content. The tool of choice was Adobe Captivate (GREAT tool for demonstrations and assessment). The learning objects were Flash-based .zip packages and were delivered with SLK. Users had the ability to view demonstrations (SharePoint how-to’s”) at any time, and could prove competency by taking quizzes.

For those of you researching SCORM, you’ll find zillions of presentations and papers that try to describe SCORM with a Lego metaphor—implying that learning objects are easily snapped together to form lessons, or entire courses. HA!

I once ran across a presentation which suggested that aggregating SCORM learning objects more resembled this game. I thought BOM was a little closer to the mark.

The message here, is that a SCORM-compliant learning management system is going to require planning, development, training and maintenance. Be wary of any reference to Legos when talking about learning objects.

I am currently developing some (DAM-related)  ideas in the accessibility space and will writing more about SCORM-savvy DAM tools in future posts.

For now, back to my Moodle proof of concept.

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