Understanding the SCORM Manifest

The SCORM manifest documents the contents of the SCORM package much as a shipping manifest does. It contains details of the resources used in the material and the way they are organized. Some LMS use elements of the manifest as the default identifier when importing the package. The key elements of the manifest can be edited from within Opus on a dialog in the Publish Wizard.

Here is an example of the Opus dialog allowing you to type in your own content for the various identifiers and titles used in the SCORM manifest.

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Here is the manifest which results from it with the sections highlighted in different colours (purely for ease of identification) and the content from the Opus dialog in bold.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<manifest

identifier="MANIFEST_ID"

version="1.100000"

xmlns="http://www.imsproject.org/xsd/imscp_rootv1p1p2"

xmlns:adlcp="http://www.adlnet.org/xsd/adlcp_rootv1p2"

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.imsproject.org/xsd/imscp_rootv1p1p2 imscp_rootv1p1p2.xsd

http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsmd_rootv1p2p1 imsmd_rootv1p2p1.xsd

http://www.adlnet.org/xsd/adlcp_rootv1p2 adlcp_rootv1p2.xsd">

<title>ORG_TITLE</title>

<title>ITEM_TITLE</title>

</item>

</organization>

</organizations>

</resource>

</resources>

</manifest>

Manifest Elements

To identify the particular package it has an identifier of its own which you can set from the Opus dialog – this is the MANIFEST_ID in the example. It also includes reference to a series of documents (called controlling documents) which include fundamental parts of the SCORM specification such as the way IDs and Titles should be named (referred to as the naming convention). These controlling documents are different for SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004.

If you are creating your own IDs and Titles you should be aware of the requirements in the controlling documents. However, if you avoid using special characters (punctuation marks and spaces) and restrict your titles and IDs to a sensible length you should be OK. The SCORM test suite will tell you if your titles don’t match the specification. Therefore, if you receive an error message telling you the naming convention you have used does not match the controlling document, you need to edit the Titles and/or IDs used in your manifest.

This section is grey in the above example and is not edited, except for the manifest identifier.

Organizations

Within the manifest is a subsection called organizations.

This is a list of ways in which you want the resources in the package organized and contains one or more subsections detailing each individual organization structure. Each manifest must have one organization and most only have one. Opus only exports manifests with a single organization. If you want multiple structures in a single manifest you will need to edit the manifest by hand.

Each organization has an identifier – this is ORG_ID in the example and can be set from the Opus dialog. It also has a title – ORG_TITLE in the example which can also be set in Opus. This is the element often used by the LMS as a default name for the lesson when it is imported.

<title>ORG_TITLE</title>

The manifest requires that the organizations section specifies the ID of the individual organization which is to be used as the default.

As Opus only includes a single organization the ID for the default organization is the same as the organization within it.

Within the organization is a list of items the organization uses in the order they are used. Each item has an identifier (ITEM_ID in the example) and a title (ITEM_TITLE) and also refers to a resource (by way of an ID) which is basically it’s content (RESOURCE_ID). All of these items can be set from the Opus dialog.

Resources

The final subsection of the manifest is the resources section. This lists the resources used in each item of the lesson. The resources are linked to the relevant item by the identifier reference which in our example is RESOURCE_ID. This ID is then followed by the type of content it contains and the filename (and location if relevant) of the specific resource which is to be used to launch that section of the lesson.

Underneath is a list of all the resources used in the resource, including the key resource specified in the first line.

Opus creates these automatically. As a minimum it will include an html page which is the wrapper around your publication and the SWF or ILM file which is your publication itself.

If your publication launches another file or uses an external document (a PDF for example) it needs to be listed here. Use the Add Files panel in the Opus Publishing wizard to add files which should accompany your main publication files but which are not already embedded in the publication.

Important Note – Scorm Resources

It is important to remember that the term resources means different things in SCORM and Opus.

In the SCORM manifest the term resources refers to your published publication and any documents it links to. In the case of a Flash publication it will be the SWF file and an HTML wrapper which launches the SWF file. If your publication displays PDF files or DOC files these should also be included.

It does not refer to the resources in your Opus Publication and you do not need to ensure these are all included in the SCORM manifest.