SCORM is a specification which is intended to standardise the way online learning materials are provided to enable disparate parties to contribute learning resource and for that resource to integrate with any other SCORM element in a consistent manner. It is also intended to allow individual learning resources to be reused more readily.
Online training is managed by a Learning Management System referred to as an LMS. This is essentially an interface to a database of learners and training materials. It is usually a website which allows learners and their trainers to choose and manage their courses. These courses consist of training material which is reviewed online and the LMS maintains a record of the status of each learner in each course.
A key aspect of the SCORM specification is that it provides a specification of the way progress and activity is communicated between the LMS and the individual learning elements. It defines what a SCORM-conformant system involves and sets the exact syntax for passing information between the LMS, the learner and the individual learning elements. Most obviously this communication includes the learner’s name and whether they have done enough in the course to be considered to have passed it.
The specification is maintained by Advanced Distributed Learning and the various elements and documentation are provided on their website www.adlnet.org. SCORM consolidates and incorporates key elements from a number of other specifications.
There is an offline equivalent referred to as AICC but in practice this is now largely replaced by the online SCORM which developed from it.
There are various elements to an online training system under the SCORM specification.
The Learning Management System, as explained, is an interface to a database of learners and course materials. It manages the lessons and the learners. It allows users to register and create a log in and then allows them to chose courses to run and monitors their progress through the individual learning portions, allowing them to resume where they left off and keeping a note of any scores.
Administrators use the LMS to upload material design courses and assign them to learning plans. Some will be mandatory, some will be for information only, whilst others will include a test and the learner will be required to pass the course. The LMS keeps track of all these aspects and allows different portions of training to be put together in courses or learning plans.
Under the SCORM specification, the LMS provides an HTML wrapper in which the learning content is displayed. In this wrapper it provides an API this essentially a set of script functions with a particular specification which provides the channel for communication. Because this API always has a particular specification under SCORM it means learning elements can come from a variety of sources and can still communicate correctly.
In addition some systems have a Learning Content Management System or LCMS. This is a system which integrates with the LMS and allows users to manage, upload, rename the various elements of the content provided via the LMS. The content can be as simple as a single video to view or a series of lessons and tests provided as a single portion.
The smallest individual portion of training of a SCORM training system is called the Sharable Content Object or SCO. This is often a single lesson and/or test but can also be a range of "lessons". The SCO consists of the online material which the learner navigates through, the resources that material relies on and a structured list of what constitutes that SCO. The latter is called a manifest. The resources included in the SCO may be referred to by links thus allowing the same resources to be reused in different learning materials without being duplicated.
Note that the term resources is used differently in SCORM and Opus. In Opus a publication contains resources such as text, sounds and images. In SCORM the term resource refers to the constituent elements of the SCO and therefore can refer to a file which is the complete lesson which contains all the sounds and images itself and not those sounds and images themselves.
SCORM also specifies the names given to various elements of information which might be exchanged between a lesson and the course or LMS. These usually include the name of the user, whether the learner has completed the course, what score they achieved in any test and whether they passed or not. Sometimes the award of a pass is made by the SCO and sometimes by the LMS. It also specifies the syntax which both the SCO and the LMS must use to communicate to ensure both understand each other.
These information elements are called data models in SCORM but Opus users may be more familiar with them as variables.
SCORM even specifies how the various elements of the SCORM package should be named – what characters are or are not permitted and so on. These specifications use other specifications and are provided in a set of additional documents called controlling documents. These controlling documents must accompany any learning element.
SCORM requires that the SCO or other learning element is provided in a zip file packaged to its specification. This is the file which is imported into the LMS.
It should include
the learning element or SCO
any resources the SCO needs which are not provided elsewhere
the controlling documents
a list of these contents with individual titles and identifiers which the LMS can use to identify them. (This list is called a manifest).
This is a list or catalogue of all the elements provided in a SCORM Content Package. In addition to listing the required controlling documents it gives everything a title and an identifier (ID). It is this manifest which the LMS reads to understand what has been imported and usually lists the course according to one of the titles in the manifest.
There are now two versions of SCORM as the standard was revised in 2004 and a new specification baseline released. SCORM v1.2 is the version of the original specification which is most widely used (even though it has been upgraded since). The newer SCORM 2004 is less widely supported but becoming increasingly popular because of the extended functionality.
The data models and some of the syntax used by them vary between v1.2 of SCORM and the more recent v2004.
The two formats use slightly different function names and data models and require a different set of XML documents to accompany your files.
Although SCORM is a comprehensive and detailed specification it is not mandatory to support all parts of the specification. Some LMS will support all data models whilst others will only support a few. Some will make a lot of information available to your publication whilst others only allow communication from the SCO to the LMS.
Some have unusual ways of presenting the API and some have particular requirements when the SCO finishes to allow the user to navigate to the next section.
If you find the LMS you are working with has particular requirements please contact support and we will be pleased to try to help. We can even write custom versions of the SCORM template to meet your requirements although there is usually a small charge for this.