The SCORM 2004 3rd edition was just released within the last year (I think) and the SCORM technical writing group has announced plans for SCORM 2004 4th edition.

Mike Rustici of scorm.com blogs about it here. He has some interesting things to say about the update, and how he feels it is necessary for progress. Also contains some interesting comments on a possible upcoming SCORM 2.0, which is in his words, "a radical update and restructuring to take advantage of how technology has evolved over since the original inception of SCORM and its underlying specifications nearly a decade ago."

Mike Rustici is THE guy to talk to when it comes to SCORM/LMS integration, so his post makes for an interesting read.

Labels: SCORM

Do you use a SCORM 1.2 based LMS with Articulate Quizmaker content and wonder why your LMS is truncating the responses to essay questions to only 255 characters?

The issue is actually that the SCORM 1.2 standard only allows questions repsonses to be up to 255 characters.

If you have worked with Learning Management Systems and content authoring tools such as Articulate Presenter, Quizmaker, and Captivate you might have run into issues with your content integrating with the Learning Management System . Often times finger pointing will happen between the Learning Management System and the authoring tool. The LMS company will say it is a problem with the content, then the authoring tool vendor will tell you it is a problem with the LMS, but very seldom do people ever point the finger at the actual standard as the culprit.

The more you find out about the SCORM 1.2 standard the more you begin to realize how inflexible it really is.

Note: The finger pointing I am reffering to is mainly from my experience at Adobe/Macromedia. Finger pointing doesn't happen at Articulate :-)

Labels: SCORM

Every so often I see a forum post, or get an email where someone asks if Articulate supports multiple SCOs or can you repackage your Articulate content with other course content into a single SCORM-Compliant package. So, what is a SCO you ask?

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:

1. Go to the Dreamweaver Exchange
2. Under 'Categories' select 'Learning'
3. Find 'Manifest Maker'
4. 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.

1. Create an output folder for both published projects
2. Create two subfolders in the output folder (one for each project)
3. 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.

1. Add your published Quizmaker projects to your Dreamweaver site
2. Open up Dreamweaver
3. Select 'Commands'
4. Select 'Manifest Maker 1.2...'
5. Set the appropriate fields on the 'Metadata' tab
6. Select 'SCOs'
7. Select each of the published HTML files and click 'Add SCO'
8. 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

It seems like lately a lot of people have been asking if Articulate Presenter and Articulate Quizmaker work with Moodle. For those of you that don't know Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities (that definition came from moodle.org, I have no idea what pedagogical means). For more information on Moodle please visit http://www.moodle.org.

The good news is that Moodle has a SCORM module which allows you to upload any standard SCORM package, which includes Articulate Presenter and Quizmaker content, to include in your course. Both Articulate Presenter and Articulate Quizmaker are certified as SCORM compliant by an independent ADL certification expert which means without having to do anything special Articulate Presenter and Quizmaker will work and report results to Moodle.

The reason this question has come up so often is that Moodle, like many Learning Management Systems, is very complicated and difficult to learn. In the brief video below I have included a demonstration on how to integrate Articulate Presenter content (with an embedded Quizmaker quiz) into Moodle.





As you can see in the demonstration Articulate Presenter and Articulate Quizmaker can work with and report results to Moodle.

Note: Moolde can be a very complicated system to install, like many other Open Source applications, if you are not an advanced computer user. I would recommend getting the help of an advanced user before attempting to install and user Moodle.

For more information on this subject please visit the following sites:
Articulate Presenter SCORM certification information.
Articulate
Moodle
Moodle and SCORM

Labels: Presenter, SCORM