A scorm odyssey: the University of Wisconsin's journey through standards has lessons for anyone about to embark on e-learning

T+D, August, 2002 by Bill Shackelford

SCORM version 2.0, planned for 2003, and subsequent versions will move beyond those capabilities and put into place specifications for creating self-adapting sequencing and navigation, as well as more complex simulations. There's even talk of version 3.0, but it still resides in that happy place in the future.

Even though UWLI has had an advantage by residing in the backyard of the ADL Academic Co-Lab, it offers an example for other e-learning developers. "Because most of the work done by the Academic Co-Lab is vittual," says executive director Brown, "the services and information are free to all ADL partners regardless of geographic location."

ADL continues to lead the world in bringing together e-learning specifications from the best available sources and keeping the e-learning community involved and informed about the evolving SCORM.

RELATED ARTICLE: E-Tips

Here are same suggestions based on the UWLI experience that can help you plan your next or first e-learning project:

* Begin to think, live, and breathe the concept of learning objects. Understanding them is the key to the effective and efficient use of learning content. Even if you're merely the purchaser of e-learning courses, the power of objects will make a major difference in the future when it comes to creating customizable learning experiences for your e-learning audience.

* Treat your SCORM odyssey as an e-learning project: Set milestones and specific deliverables to produce as you journey into the evolving world of e-learning standards.

* Familiarize yourself with the resources made available through ADL and its three co-labs adlnet.org. Download the materials and test suites and become your organization's resident expert on the potential of SCORM.

* Learn about meta-data. I know someone who has hundreds of unlabeled videotapes and can't find the movie he wants when he wants it (guess who?). Developing e-learning content without developing descriptive meta-data leads to a similar situation. Meta-data is crucial to putting the sharable into e-learning content.

* Test your content for conformance using the ADL test suites. Become familiar with the suites and their output so you can test new material quickly and easily for various levels of compliance.

Your first exposure to reuse may be when you try to transfer content from one LMS to another. Even if you don't think you're going to do a lot of reusing, remember that conformant content will be easier to migrate when it's time to change LMSs or LMS versions. An important SCORM goal is durability--an implied promise that little of your work in meeting specifications will have to be redone when future versions come along. Even though drastically disruptive new technologies could make migration harder, adherence to SCORM specifications will make most migrations much easier than in the past.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES

SCORM (shareable content object reference model) promises to bring together the best of current e-learning standards and provide a common ground for the future. The Advanced Distributed Learning initiative draws from the work of several key consortiums to develop SCORM and provide industry specifications.