Repackaging Articulate content to allow multiple SCO's?
20 Comments Dave blogged on Thursday, May 25, 2006 at 7:07 PM.
Well, I lifted this from the ADL's website, that explains what it is.
The Content Model defines a powerful model for breaking content into arbitrarily sized units of reuse. These units are called Sharable Content Objects (SCOs) and Assets. An Asset is simply an "electronic representation of media, text, images, sound, Web pages, assessment objects or other pieces of data." Examples of Assets include images, sound clips, Flash movies, etc. A SCO is a collection of one or more assets that represents a logical unit of learning.
For more info on the SCORM communication process check out this site, it is a great resource for anyone looking for an Overview of SCORM communication.
So now that you know what a SCO is, you are probably asking, "well, why would I want to repackage to support multiple SCOs?"
The reason you might want to repackage your content is that maybe you want one single package that has both a Articulate Presenter presentation, and a Articulate Quizmaker quiz. Used independently, you could see that each one could be considered a different logical unit of learning. This can be useful becuase it allows you to reuse existing content, then just repackage several individual units of learning, and have it all in one nice little package.
Make sense? Probably not, but if you got here, and you are reading this, you probably already know why you would want to do this. So your next question is ok, I know what it is, and I know why I want it, now how do I repackage my individual SCOs into a single package. The answer is to use the Manifest Maker to repackage your content. So how do you use Manifest Maker? Well, I have included directions below from a recent forum posting I did.
In order to create multiple SCOs you will have to create multiple assests (for example a Articulate Presentation, and a Quizmaker Quiz) and create a new package using "Manifest Maker" to point to the launch files of each project.
Note: These directions will only work for SCORM 1.2 content and require the use of Macromedia's Dreamweaver.
Install "Manifest Maker"
First you will need to download and install the "Manifest Maker" for Dreamweaver:
- Go to the Dreamweaver Exchange
- Under 'Categories' select 'Learning'
- Find 'Manifest Maker'
- Follow the prompts for installing the 'Manifest Maker'
Note: For more information on the 'Manifest Maker' see the following website:
http://www.e-learningconsulting.com/products/manifest-maker.html
Publish Content
Now that you have installed "Manifest Maker" you must create your individual SCOs. For example, you can publish a Quizmaker Quiz, and a Articulate Presenter Presentation as each of your individual SCOs.
- Create an output folder for both published projects
- Create two subfolders in the output folder (one for each project)
- Publish the projects to the respective directories with SCORM output enabled
Repackage
Now that you have created your individual SCO's you will have to repackage them using the "Manifest Maker" inside of Dreamweaver.
- Add your published Quizmaker projects to your Dreamweaver site
- Open up Dreamweaver
- Select 'Commands'
- Select 'Manifest Maker 1.2...'
- Set the appropriate fields on the 'Metadata' tab
- Select 'SCOs'
- Select each of the published HTML files and click 'Add SCO'
- Click OKThis will generate the necessary files for you to repackage your content so you will have a package with multiple SCOs.
This will generate the necessary files for you to repackage your content so you will have a package with multiple SCOs.
Final Thoughts
I know this is a pretty advanced topic, and it might be very confusing, if you do not understand this topic, and you want more info, please don't hesitate to contact me via the comment links below.
Also, Articulate Presenter and Quizmaker can work in tandem without having to repackage the content, the only reason why you should use the Manifest Maker is if you want to keep your individual assets separated, but be able to repackage them and support multiple SCOs.
Finally, if you think this post looks eerily similar to technote on another website...well, it is, and I wrote that too :-)
Have a great Memorial Day!
Labels: SCORM
AICC
Articulate Presenter SDK (2:03)
Articulate
You're right on as far as your explanation of SCORM goes. There are other tools out there for content packaging and manifest creation that allow a little more control than Manifest Maker, though admittedly they require a little more knowledge about SCORM to use. The best of them is Reload Editor, an open-source project with a fantastic visual drag-and-drop manifest creation tool and content packager.
There are plenty of tutorials on how to communicate with JavaScript in order to do some pretty advanced things with SCORM, and they can be found online at www.adlnet.gov -- just search the downloads for Plug-In Technology Example.
-a-
We are developing content for deployment on someone else's LMS, and we don't have much knowledge of LMSs and SCORM. I figured out how to publish Presenter files with SCORM compliance. Now I need to combine multiple presentations as a single course with multiple lessons. Your article is quite helpful, but is it necessary to publish the quizzes separately from the presentation if the quizzes are embedded in the presentation?
Nope. You only have to repackage the content if you want them to be different learning objectives. A quiz inside a presentation is a single learning objective.
Hello Dave,
I am trying to setup something simular to the multiple sco, but I want to offer a choice of a language based course. Do you know if you create a multiple sco version as you described above, does the user have to do all of the courses, or just untill articulate completes it.
My other idea is to setup an index page with sub folders for each language, making the imsmanifest for that index page.
Hello David,
As is my understanding...In the scenario you set up, if they only attempted one of the quizzes/presentations out of say 4...it would show that they passed 1, and have not completed 3.
"My other idea is to setup an index page with sub folders for each language, making the imsmanifest for that index page."
I think this idea would work, but I am not really an expert when it comes to this. You might want to check out the Reload Editor, and see what it takes to create your own packages.
My head is swimming with the possibilities while drowning with the realization that I might be in over my head.
We've committed ourselves to publish courses that are trilingual. Language selection is made at the beginning of the course. Each language has its own quiz.
To pass (or fail) the course would be to pass (or fail) any of the three individual quizes.
Will the process of 'repackaging', as you explained it, accomplish what I think I need?
-=A=-
I was wondering if repackaging using manifest maker or reload maker would help me with a problem I am having. I have a pretest and postest in one course published in articulate presenter. I want to take the score of the pretest and put it in a field in the postest so that i can compare - what the student learned in the course.
I know I can create 2 learning presentations and record them separately in the lms using scorm... however, because of administrative limits and the fact that our lms is off sight... i want to do as much as possible on my end, ie. backend programming etc... so that I can just send my presentation, as one learning object.
thank you for your consideration,
rebecca
Hello Ashu,
Unfortunately I don't think this will work. If you repackaged to support multiple SCO's each SCO would still be required to be completed. What you want is to skip the SCOs that don't pertain.
It sounds like what you are looking for is kind of like conditional branching (i.e. looking for a user to choose a path, and then be tested based on that choice). I currently don't have a recommendation for this other than possibly look at using Captivate 2, which allows for branching. This is something we are looking at for the future for inclusion in Articulate Presenter.
Hello Rebecca,
Yes, it does sound like it would work. The pre-test would be the first SCO, the second test would be the second SCO.
Not sure how your LMS handles multiple SCOs, but I believe in Moodle this would work.
Dear Dave,
The LMS administrator said, "he is familiar with SCO's but he cannot save both the pretest and the post test results because he is using SCORM 1.2 currently for his LMS."
Does that mean if I bundle the two pretest/course:posttest together...in a SCO, only one score will be recorded? Do you think there is another way to handle this?
Again, as per last post, I am trying to record a pretest and a postest per learning activity...
I just need the score of the pretest, and i want to put it into the post test, so that both could be recorded together as one test... if that is my only option.
what do you think?
thanks,rebecca
Hello Rebecca,
Bummer about the LMS administrators comments. Actually it should work with SCORM 1.2, at least it did for me in moodle.
Basically what this does is keep both quizzes as separate entities (separate SCOs), then each quiz is scored independently. If you repackage the content to allow for multipe SCO's in a single package it will link the two SCO's togehter.
For more info on the concept, check out this PDF doc:
http://www.jointadlcolab.org/research/2005/assessments/learner_assessment_bpguide_final.pdf
From what you are saying though, maybe the LMS administrator doesn't entirely understand the concept? If so, what you might want to do is just hand him a multiple SCO package, and see if it works like you are hoping it would.
Dave,
Thank you for your direction. I am going to be spending time this weekend studying Captivate. Until now we have only used it for recording and used Articulate for course compilation. I will keep you posted on my progress if it suits.
-=A=-
Dave,
Forgive me if I seem dense. I tried to follow your recommendations for repackaging Articulate content to allow multiple SCO's with no success. I need your help to troubleshoot my errors that I must have made. Here is what I did.
I put together an Articulate Presenter course with one quiz that is inserted into the presentation.
Next I went to QM and put together a course evaluation survey and did not insert it into the Articulate Presenter course.
So far these are two distinct entities (two potential SCO's?). Then I created a new folder and labelled it the course name. (This is the output folder?)
I created two more folders within the course folder. I labelled one the name of the inserted quiz in the Articulate Presenter Presentation and I named the other folder "Course Evaluation" from QM. (These two folders are the subfolders?)
Next I opened the Articulate Presenter ppt file and published the Articulate Presenter Presentation with the inserted quiz to its subfolder. The I opened QM and published the course evaluation survey to the other subfolder.
Some questions:
When I published to a subfolder,another folder with all of the published files for say the Articulate Presenter presentaion was created. Is that correct? Too many folders?
In each of the published subfolders an imsmanifest exists. Is that correct?
So now the two SCO's have been published and are in separate folders.
I go to "Manifest Maker" and create a new site in Dreamweaver that includes the course folder, the two subfolders and within each subfolder is the published SCO folder with all files.
I select "Manifest Maker" and set the metadata. (I assume that I only need to enter what meta-data that is appropriate and can leave blank as needed?)
I go to the SCOs screen and first select the index.html file that will launch the Articulate Presenter presentation (the first SCO). I click "add SCO."
Then I select the index.html file that will launch the course evaluation (the second SCO).
I click 'add SCO."
I click "OK."
This seems like I follwed your recommendations. Finally, I zipped the entire Dreamweaver defined site as a package.
When I tested the zipped package in TestSuite1.2 it indicated that the "The manifest is non well- formed and that it is not valid against the controlling documents." "Package was non-conformant." "Package contains no SCOs."
What did I do wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
D
Hey D,
My first thought would be that possibly you have one too many folders. Your structure should look like this:
\rootproject
\rootproject\presenter
\rootproject\quizmaker
and not like this:
\rootproject
\rootproject\presenter\output
\rootproject\quizmaker\output
Also, it could be an issue with how you are using the test suite. Do you get the same error when running an un-molested AP generated ZIP file through the test suite? The SCORM test suites can be very anal if you don't run them exactly as defined in the documentation.
"Actually it should work with SCORM 1.2, at least it did for me in moodle."
I have created a series of SCORM packages generated by publishing to LMS in articulate Presenter and have them working fine in Moodle. I am trying to figure out how to enable a seamless transition from one scorm based articulate presenter (or Quizmaker) activity to the next in Moodle. Currently, the learner exits the presenter view, exits the SCORM activity and returns to the Moodle topic page. My learners would like the option of moving on to the next activity once the current one is finished without having to make two exits, go to the topics page and select the next activity. Moodle offers a jump to navigation option in all other views except SCORM.
Anonymous: "My learners would like the option of moving on to the next activity once the current one is finished without having to make two exits, go to the topics page and select the next activity."
As far as I understand you are asking for sequencing which is part of scorm 2004. You must have a LMS and of cource a authoring tool that supports scorm 2004.
Hi Dave,
I created a project folder and, within that, 2 subfolders. I published an Articulate presentation into each of the subfolders. Then, I used Manifest Maker to create a SCORM package with multiple SCOs, as per your instructions.
I imported the package into my LMS, and everything works fine, except that the Exit function on the Articulate course player doesn't work. Specifically, the 'Exit now' button fails to respond when clicked. I have to close the player by clicking on the browser's exit button.
When I import the 2 Articulate presentations into the LMS separately, the 'Exit now' button works fine. However, when they are repackaged with Manifest Maker, the 'Exit now' button doesn't work.
I have tried to change the EXIT_BEHAVIOR value in the /lms/configuration.js file in each subfolder with no success. Could it be because the Articulate presentations exist in subfolders within the root project folder?
Any insight you could give me would be greatly appreciated.
So, if I want a single Presenter course with multiple embedded Quizmaker quizzes--1 per lesson (results not tracked by LMS), and a single embedded course certification assessment, I could treat the whole thing as 1 SCO, and have just the final assessment score result tracked in the LMS (or, alternately a number of screens visited)?
Hi Dave
I am testing this test scenario where I have SCORM 1.2 output module with no quiz just slides created by presenter and a quiz created by quizmaker as my two SCOs. I followed the instructions on your post and added index_lms.html for module and index_lms for quiz as SCOs in manifest maker. I zipped the PIF and performed Content Package Conformance test throgh ADL test Suite 1.2.7. The test runs fine for metadata but gives an error LMSINitialize() never invoked. I tried to run just the module created by presenter through the same test and could get the module to pass the test. Only difference i can think of is that palyer.htm and index_lms.html are at root level in module created by presenter but in my packaged content, they are inside subfolders created for module and quiz. Can you please help me to package the content right so they can be at root level? I assume that this is the error since the course can't be launched in my test scenario in ADl run time environment.
This is in reference to my earlier comment. I got it figured out after working on it for a week. So, all launchabe files don't really need to be at root level. The package obtained by following above steps is perfect. Only thing is when the content is zipped, select all folders and files and then zip it instead of zipping the entire folder. Another problem I was having was the Google Tool bar, I had on my IE browser. It was blocking launch file for the presenter course to launch the course. I uninstalled the Google tool bar and the package could pass the test. Thanks Dave for writing this post. This is really helpful.