E-learning; the one question you should ask before you purchase e-learning. Hint: Think standards - electronic learning and Shareable Content Object Reference Model

T+D, April, 2002 by Kevin Oakes, Raghavan Rengarajan

Buyers of e-learning are demanding a better return on their investment. They want content to have a lengthy shelf life and work with any vendor's platform. They want to be able to reuse their learning assets in any environment and want various platforms to work together, seamlessly. And they want to be able to track information across systems from different vendors.

That's hardly news. Several years earlier, buyers were demanding the same things. There's only one way those demands are ultimately met. In a word, standards. Standards are usually taken for granted, but history has proved again and again that standards are one of the main catalysts that turn a cottage industry into a big industry.

For example, the book industry was made possible largely by the standardization of a pocket-size product, which made books portable in gentlemen's saddlebags and, therefore, a commodity. When automobile manufacturers agreed on a reasonably standard gasoline formulation, that suddenly made it possible to drive to the next town or next state without having to return home to fuel up, which in turn fueled the entire auto industry.

For office technology, standards have been equally critical to success. Can you imagine having to check with people on what kind of fax machine they own before faxing something to them? Without a standard, you wouldn't have the luxury of assuming your fax would transmit successfully.

That's essentially what we've had to tolerate in e-learning: no assumption of interoperability, and a lot of manual labor just to make it work. Thankfully, that's changing. Current standards are having a profound effect on protecting the e-learning buyer's investment.

The leading learning technology standards are mostly in the hands of the U.S. Department of Defense, and for good reason. The DoD has a long history of technical innovation.

For example, several decades ago, the DoD created the TCP/IP reference model because it wanted a computer network that could survive any conditions, even a nuclear war. TCP/IP is now the foundation on which the Internet is built.

In early 2000, as part of the ADL (advanced distributed learning) initiative, the DoD, along with the White House Office of Technology and Department of Labor, commissioned the creation of the Shareable Content Object Reference Model--better known as SCORM. The SCORM standard was created because there was a clear need for shareable, reusable content objects that could be used on TCP/IP networks in various training conditions, without the limitations of proprietary vendor or system implementations. More to the point, SCORM is a set of specifications that describe 1) how to create Web-based learning content that can be delivered and tracked by various SCORM-compliant learning management systems and 2) what a SCORM-compliant learning management system must do to deliver and track SCORM-compliant learning content properly.

SCORM is based completely on the new XML protocol, but it's built upon specifications developed much earlier by various industry initiatives such as the AICC (Aviation Industry CBT Committee), IMS (Instructional Management System) Global Learning Consortium, and the IEEE LTSC (Learning Technology Standards Committee). Early standards efforts, such as those of the AICC, demonstrated the demand by customers for more longevity and more interoperability of content and data generated by learning management systems, as well as the difficulty of achieving truly interoperable specifications without a rigorous process.

Current standards efforts are better coordinated, with the IMS developing general specifications, the ADL developing more explicit applications of the specifications, and the IEEE LTSC (and ISO) turning the specifications into accredited international standards.

SCORM versus AICC

Because SCORM and AICC are the two best-known standards, many buyers want to know how they differ. The SCORM specification actually incorporates many of the AICC's good traits. For example, SCORM uses a data model for communication between learning objects and a learning management system that's derived directly from the AICC specification.

The AICC specification, however, is quite old and was conceived for content delivery and tracking in a DOS environment, long before the window-based graphical environment--let alone the Web--was considered viable. As such, AICC suffers from legacy issues and ambiguities that have never been resolved properly. Still, it's useful in certain contexts--in particular, when compliant legacy content and tools are deployed.

The SCORM specification and test suite are less ambiguous and more practical than the AICC specification--in part, because more stakeholders are involved in SCORM, causing more scrutiny of the specification as it evolves. For example, the latest SCORM specification enables the collection of an entire content deliverable into a robust package, but the AICC specification has no such facility, and migrating AICC-based content is difficult. In addition, it's easier to create learning content for SCORM than for AICC because SCORM doesn't require a complicated communication protocol to code into the content.