e-Learning Standared (SCORM)

1. e-Learning Standared (SCORM) Day 1 Eng. Mostafa Mahmoud

2. Course Objectives • After completing this couser learner will be able to: • Define what is e-Learning standards • Idetify what is SCORM • Describe the main part of SCORM

3. Topics • What is Standard ? • Why need e-Learning Standards ? • What is SCORM? • Why SCORM? • What is SCO? • What is Content Package? • The Content Package and Manifest File • SCORM Versions • SCORM 1.1 • SCORM 1.2 • SCORM 2004 • A Communications Channel - The API • Data Transfer SCORM

4. What is standard ? • Standards • Standard is a definition or format that has been approved by a recognized standards organization . • Standards exist for programming languages, operating systems, data formats, communications protocols, and electrical interfaces. • Standard set out what are widely accepted as good principles, practices or guidelines in a given area. • Standards Examples: • Writing functions in programming languages • Http, TCP/IP in communications protocols • RJ45 as in electrical interfaces • SCORM in e-learning Course Name

5. What is standards Types? • De jure • De jure standards are those ratified by recognized international standards bodies such as the ISO and IEEE. • De jure is an expression that means "based on law", as contrasted with de facto, which means "in fact". SCORM

6. What is standards Types? • De facto • De facto standards are those used by the vast majority of the market, Expression that means "in fact" or "in practice" but not spelled out by law. SCORM

7. Why Standards are important? • Avoid reinvention the wheel: as long as one follows some standards that others also may follow then you will understand each other without the need to reproduce or redevelop something. • Reduces costs: As a result of not reinvention the wheel, the cost will be significantly reduces. • Assure Quality: it unifies the procedures and the processes to assure quality products. • Speed Acceptance & Deployment: standard make things very organized. Hence, it optimizes speed of development and development. • Minimize confusion: standards make all people talk the same languages which eliminates confusion. • Compatibility and interoperability: These are the main causes of product failure so standards care about compatibility from the beginning. Course Name

8. Why need e-Learning Standards ? • E-learning industry grows, so does the need for global standards in e-learning technology. • Standard in e-Learning would be the ability to access all courses from any vendor directly form one’s intranet and administer these courses from any one training management system also from your intranet. • Example: • One would be able to buy management system form a vender, authoring form another, content form a third, and expect it to all work together and this entire means saving money and time. Course Name

9. Why need e-Learning Standards ? • Before Standards • We couldn’t move a course from one Learning Management System to another. • We couldn’t reuse content pieces across different Learning Management Systems. • We couldn’t sequence reusable content for branching, remediation and other tailored learning strategies. • We couldn’t create searchable learning object libraries or media repositories across different LMS environments. SCORM

10. Why need e-Learning Standards ? • The goal of standards is to provide fixed structures and communication protocols for e-learning objects . • This enables interoperability between applications, by providing uniform communication guidelines that can be used throughout the design, development, and delivery of learning objects. • A comprehensive library of training materials in one repository • Access to reports that allow for better measurements of usage and results. SCORM

11. Why need e-Learning Standards ? • From a consumer perspective • Standards prevent lock-in to particular vendors and products. Costs are lowered as custom installations are replaced by “plug and play”. SCORM

12. Why need e-Learning Standards ? • From a learning content producer’s perspective • Standards allow content to be produced in a single format for use by any delivery system. SCORM

13. From a designer’s perspective • From a designer’s perspective • e-learning standards will make their jobs easier by giving them access to large storehouses of reusable content, by reducing the need to develop to multiple systems, and by allowing them to create modular content that can be more easily updated and maintained. SCORM

14. The Characteristics of e-learning standards. • The development of e-learning standards to design and deliver e-learning content is summarized as “DAMRAIN”—which stands : • Durability. • Accessibility. • Manageability. • Reusability. • Affordability. • Interoperability. SCORM

15. The Characteristics of e-learning standards. • Durability • The LMS and LCMS must be able to accommodate minor changes to the contents and to the application design without the need to redesign the e-learning system. Even if there are major changes to the contents, the standards should enable the design of the e-learning system to be consistent. SCORM

16. The Characteristics of e-learning standards. • Accessibility • The LMS or LCMS must have the ability to access courses and learning objects through the use of metadata and package standards, thereby allowing many learners to access learning content stored remotely. SCORM

17. The Characteristics of e-learning standards. • Manageability • is the ability to track the learner’s use of the e-learning system and the storage of the resulting data in an LMS or LCMS as a learning record accessible by both the learner and management. The system should be able to package the learning objects so that they can be managed for a large number of users. SCORM

18. The Characteristics of e-learning standards. • Reusability • is the ability to design, store and manage learning content as small compatible learning objects that can be used in combination over and over again as elements of different courses. • A curriculum is assembled from reusable courses, which are assembled from reusable lessons, which are made of reusable pages containing reusable media elements. SCORM

19. The Characteristics of e-learning standards. • Affordability • is to leverage standardized technologies to increase development productivity and learning effectiveness while reducing cost. • If standards are followed, integration with various software tools that follow the same standards will be cheaper in both personnel and software cost. SCORM

20. The Characteristics of e-learning standards. • Interoperability • allows the picking of the best designer, tools, content, and management systems—and enables the replacement of any of them without having to redo the others. • All features and functions of content that conform to a standard can be used on any LMS that conforms to the same standard. SCORM

21. Organizations and specifications • Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) • In 1999, the Department of Defense(DoD) established the Advanced Distributed Learning. • The vision of the ADL Initiative is to provide access to the highest-quality learning and performance aiding that can be tailored to individual needs and delivered cost-effectively, at the right time and in the right place. • ADL focuses on the following: • Technology to deliver learning at a faster rate and at a lower cost. • Standardization to enable interoperability. • Learning objects to enable searchable and reusable content. Course Name

22. Organizations and specifications • Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee(AICC) • AICC created in 1988. • The Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee (AICC) is an international association of technology-based training professionals that creates guidelines for the development, delivery, and evaluation of training technologies. • The AICC pioneered the most widely accepted interoperability standards for computer-based and web-based training. • Their goal is more cost-effective, efficient and sustainable training. • Though they publish a variety of recommendations including hardware and software configurations. Course Name

23. Organizations and specifications • The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) • The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society Standards Activity Board has chartered the Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC) to develop technical standards, recommended practices, and guides for computer implementations of education and training components and systems—specifically, the software components, tools, technologies, and design methods that facilitate their development, deployment, maintenance, and interoperation. Course Name

24. Organizations and specifications • IMS Global Learning Consortium • IMS is a consortium of vendors and implementers who focus on the development of XML-based specifications. • These specifications describe the key characteristics of course, lessons, assessments, learners and groups. • IMS has developed the key specifications for content metadata, content structure and content packaging and is continuing work on specifications for assessment and test. Course Name

25. What is SCORM? • Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based e-learning. • SCORM defines a specific way of constructing Learning Management Systems and training content so that they work well with other SCORM conformant systems. • SCORM is a product of the U.S. Government's initiative in Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL). • SCORM specifications are a composite of several specifications developed by international standards organizations, including the IEEE, IMS, AICC and ARIADNE. Course Name

26. Benefits of SCORM • SCORM compliance leverages course development investments by ensuring that compliant courses are "RAID": • Reusable: Easily modified and used by different development tools and platforms. • Accessible: Can be searched and made available as needed by both learners and content developers. • Interoperable: Operate across a wide variety of hardware, operating systems and web browsers. • Durable: Do not require significant modifications with new versions of system software. Course Name

27. Benefits of SCORM • Reusability: Lowers costs because learning contents can be used many times. • SCORM allowing for learning contents to be easily modified and used by different tools and platforms. • For example, SCORM compliant learning contents produced by an authoring tool and platforms can be reused, modified by another set of SCORM compliant tools and platforms. • This allows you to spend less effort in creating new contents from scratch and focus more on incorporating existing contents to meet the specific needs of the learner and corporation. Course Name

28. Benefits of SCORM • Accessibility: Increased access to learning information. • Accessibilityallows content developers to create and manage content in a way that allows other content developers and learners to discover appropriate content. • The SCORM standard offers you the ability to access learning contents from anywhere and at anytime. • It allows you to search, identify, access and retrieve contents that are widely distributed in SCORM compliant repositories. Course Name

29. Benefits of SCORM • Interoperability: Systems works efficiently together • Interoperability makes sure that content developed for one SCORM-conformant LMS can be delivered on another LMS. • Organizations do not have to stay with the same brand of LMS forever. • In addition, content createdby one organization can be shared with another organization that has a different LMS. Course Name

30. Benefits of SCORM • Durability: Learning contents will not easily become obsolete • Durability ensures the learning systems of the future will be compatible with the SCOs of today. • Because of SCORM, content developers will not have to modify learning content when software or hardware systems change. • And, the future developers of the LMSs or other learning environments will be obliged to create platforms that conform to SCORM. Course Name

31. Standard or Not Standard?

32. Standard or Not Standard?

33. Standard or Not Standard?

34. SCORM Content Model Components • SCORM Content Model is made up of the following components: • Assets • Sharable Content Objects(SCO) • Content Aggregations Course Name

35. SCORM Content Model Components • Assets • Learning content in its most basic form is composed of Assets that are electronic representation of media, text, images, sound, web pages, assessment objects or other pieces of data that can be delivered to a Web client. • An Asset can be described with Asset Meta-data to allow for search and discovery within online repositories. Course Name

36. SCORM Content Model Components • Sharable Content Object (SCO) • Sharable Content Object (SCO) represents a collection of one or more Assets. • SCO is the smallest logical unit of instruction one can deliver and track via a Learning Management System (LMS). • Some would call SCO a module, a chapter, a page… the point is that it varies widely. • SCO is the smallest piece of content that is both reusable and independent. Course Name

37. SCORM Content Model Components • Sharable Content Object (SCO) • One or more SCOs can be aggregated to form a higher-level unit of instruction or training that fulfills higher level learning objectives. • SCO can be extracted from a learning object and used by another learning object. This is essential to achieving the SCORM reusability goal. Course Name

38. Course Navigation • Course navigation must be carefully considered by content authors, and instructional designers before developing course content. • It is important to realize that if you are building a SCORM-conformant course, you must plan for both within and between-SCO navigation: • Within-SCO navigation - content sequencing conducted within a SCO. • Between-SCO navigation - sequencing between different SCOs. • This is complicated by the "Golden Rule for SCOs:" • "A SCO must never, never link directly to another SCO!" SCORM

39. Course Navigation • SCORM-conformant, embedding links within pages from one lesson to another creates problems. • Because of repository and reusability issues, the SCORM run-time specification states: • Navigation between SCOs is the sole responsibility of the LMS. “SCOs may not launch other SCOs” • An LMS may only launch one SCO at a time and have only one active at a time. SCORM

40. Course Navigation • Within-SCOnavigation is the sole responsibility of the SCO • Course developers can provide for within SCO navigation in several ways including: • Simple hyperlinks from one SCO element to another element within the same SCO, • JavaScript and frames to provide within-SCO navigation, • java applets, and plug-ins. SCORM

41. SCORM Content Model Components • Content Aggregation • Content Aggregation is a map (content structure) that can be used to aggregate learning resource into a cohesive unit of instruction (e.g. course, chapter, module, etc). • The content aggregation defines the content structure that provides the mechanisms for defining the sequence that learning resources are to be represented to the user. SCORM

42. SCORM Meta-data • Meta-data defines a list of minimum information that each piece of content should have attached to it. • This is used to express common attributes of content (such as author, price, level of instruction, etc) as well as providekeywords that could be used to catalog and search for e-leaning content. • There are three types of meta-data: • Assets meta-data. • Sharable Content Object Meta-data. • Content Aggregation meta-data. SCORM

43. SCORM Meta-data • Assets Meta-data • A definition of meta-data that can be applied to assets that provides descriptive information about the Asset independent of any usage or potential usage within courseware content. • This meta-data is used to facilitate reuse and discoverability principally during content creation, of such Assets within, for example, a content repository. SCORM

44. SCORM Meta-data • Sharable Content Object Meta-data • A definition of meta-data that can be applied to a SCOs that provides descriptive information about the content represented in the SCO. • This meta-data is used to facilitate reuse and discoverability o f such content within, for example, a content repository. SCORM

45. SCORM Meta-data • Content Aggregation Meta-data • A definition for meta-data that describes the content aggregation. • The purpose of applying content aggregation meta data is to make the content aggregation accessible within, for example, a content repository and to provide descriptive information about aggregated content represented by the content package as a whole. SCORM

46. Content Packaging • The purpose of content packaging is to provide a standardized way to exchange digital learning resources between different systems or tools. • Content packaging defines file describing the package itself which contains: • Course Description (course meta-data). • Course Sequencing (navigation). • Course Resources (SCOs and Assets). SCORM

47. Content Packaging • Content packages are expected to be used to move digital learning resources or collections of learning resources between learning management systems (LMS), development tools and content repositories. • This information is placed into a single file with the label imsmanifest.xml. This is an XML file, which means that it is a simple text file containing XML syntax. In this course we use the term manifest file to refer to this file. • Content packaging in SCORM is derived from the IMS Content Packaging specification, version 1.1.2. SCORM

48. Components of a Content Package Content Structure SCOs & Assets SCORM

49. Imsmanifest.xml File • Packaging of SCORM-conformant courses is described in a special file with the name "imsmanifest.xml." • This file must be located in the top-level directory and it must contain four sections. • Each section starts with a unique xml tag and must be arranged in the following order: • PREAMBLE • META-DATA • ORGANIZATION • RESOURCES SCORM

50. The Preamble Section • The preamble is used by LMS to validate the contents of this file, i.e., ensure that the contentsfollows the syntax and structure required by the specifications. • There is onelabel that must contain the name of the manifest file assigned by the course developer. • The developer can select any name they choose for the manifest file. That name is identified by the "identifier" attribute in the <manifest> tag. SCORM