We’ve been knee deep in developing enhancements to – heck, creating an almost entirely new – SCORM Cloud, but that doesn’t mean we put other products on hold.
In fact, we’ve got big, huge, gargantuan news regarding SCORM Engine, still the player of choice for great e-learning applications. And now, it’s the choice of Odijoo, which is on the verge of releasing with SCORM Engine in place.
Not familiar with Odijoo? They’re a free web-based eLearning platform (soon to be SCORM 2004 and 1.2 conformant!) that allows users to have their own personalized online space from which to create, publish, share and monetize online courses. It’s a pretty cool service for people who don’t need their own installed LMS, want an easy way to create a course or look to make money distributing content.
Odijoo just launched back in October and quickly discovered a need for people to be able to import previously created content. And … well, since part of the point of using SCORM is to be able to easily play content across systems, SCORM moved up the to-do list to become the next step in Odijoo’s evolution.
The big bonus in this scenario for Odijoo is the tolerance we build into our players. Fewer headaches as people begin bringing in content created in a wide variety of tools and for a wide variety of LMSs.
Welcome to the Rustici Software family, Odijoo!
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I’m gonna take a quick break from the SCORM Cloud beta tour to lay out a decision we’ve just made. In creating the SCORM Cloud user interface, we confronted something every web developer has been dealing with forever…
Which browsers are we going to support?
This question is a little different for us than most companies in that we have two distinct audiences: the companies that embed our software and those that use it directly.
In supporting companies like we do via SCORM Engine and SCORM Driver, we have an obligation to provide them with the support they need. And let me tell you, many of our clients still support IE5.5 (the bane of a designer’s existence).
So, we’ve got a particular responsibility to support the lowest common denominator (or something close to it). It is not our place to drag our customers’ customers forward in the browser evolution… We don’t get to make that decision for them, and so we won’t. This decision applies to the following products:
- SCORM Engine
- SCORM Driver
- Embed-able components of SCORM Cloud, accessed via the API
For our embed-able, compatibility based products, we support and will continue to support the following browsers.
- Firefox 1.0+
- Internet Explorer 5.5+
- Safari 1.0+
- Chrome (we’re still phasing this in, but all appears to be working nicely)
Our World
For our customers and their customers … we have a certain obligation … . But when it comes to the products we offer directly to the customer, we get to make our own choices. And I don’t feel bad about eliminating a potential customer by virtue of an informed decision if it affects only Rustici Software.
In designing and implementing SCORM Cloud’s new UI, we went to our usage metrics. In looking at Google Analytics, we’re seeing that just 7% of our total visitors are using IE6. For us, that number is low enough that we’re willing to ask those users to upgrade if they want to fully experience SCORM Cloud (and its Test Track functionality). Our apologies go out to those of you locked into old browsers by your situation or employer, but we’re going to drop our support of IE5.5 and IE6 for our customer facing products.
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(I’ve posted this in several places, but I really want all of our customers to see it. My apologies if you’ve already read it.)
If you’re having any performance problems with the SCORM Engine, we have good solutions for you. This article in particular gives the details.
These fixes are easy, fast, and reliable. And they have a substantial impact on performance for SQL Server customers in particular.
Lastly, you may all feel free to mock me for the fact that our “optimized” option is, in fact, slower than our “non-optimized” option in many circumstances. (Whereas the “Ask us anything” invitation on the website is sincere, please be so kind as to restrict your mocking of me to this particular topic. I don’t like to be seen crying at the office.)
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A Sneak Peak::Reporting Concepts
Categories: Ideas and Thoughts, SCORM Cloud, SCORM Engine
21 Oct 2009
We talk about living our company’s life publicly a fair amount… so we’re going to take another step in that regard here. We’re in the early stages of creating an add-on product… something that could sit on top of the SCORM Engine and/or the SCORM Cloud. Mike and I have heard too many times that reporting on SCORM data is “impossible” or “way too hard” or “useless”. We don’t believe it for a second. Well, OK, we do acknowledge that it’s pretty difficult, but it seems to be a problem worth solving, so we’ve been putting our collective energies into it for the last couple of months.
For the first “arc” of development on it, we’ve been entirely focused on the user experience. We want to be sure we’re creating something that is notably different from LMSs that disappoint and profoundly useful. Short of that, there’s not a lot of reason to commit the energy this will inevitably require.
Without further adieu, we’d like to ask you to click around in our completely mocked up “reportage”. (You’ll notice that the data doesn’t change and that many of the things that look clickable really aren’t. We’ll ask you for some contact information on the way in, but nothing more. We would love for you to dig into the reports and give us any and all feedback. If it sucks, tell us that. If it would be endlessly valuable to you, tell us that too.
- What are we missing?
- Are there views of the suggested data that would be more useful?
- Should we arrange the data differently?
- Is there something you want to know that isn’t there?
If you’d like to check it out, check it out here.
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Score Rollup in SCORM 1.2: There’s no silver bullet
Categories: SCORM 2004, SCORM Cloud, SCORM Engine, Using the Standards
7 Oct 2009
I got this question today (and yes, we really do mean you can ask us anything…):
We are making configuration settings for our new LMS ([redacted]) and one of the questions is:
1.3.5. How is the overall score for a SCORM course with more than one SCO computed? With the following choices:
- MaximumScore. Highest score of all items (SCOs) in the course.
- AverageScore. Average score of all items (SCOs) in the course.
- FirstScore. The first score achieved by the user across all items (SCOs) in the course. Note: If this option is selected, ScormScoreUpdateOption should be set to “Never” and the user’s score will always remain the first score they achieved.
- MostRecentScore. The most recent score achieved by the user across all items (SCOs) in the course.
What do you recommend?
My first reaction
Well, clearly we’re talking about an LMS that is really SCORM 1.2 centric. This ability to manage scores across attempts and SCOs is one of the things that SCORM 2004 actually does very well. Rollup rules allow the content author to specify these behaviors in great detail, including weighting the various elements and even excluding some. This provides the author with useful tools such as pre-assessment that doesn’t impact overall satisfaction.
My second reaction
There simply is not a good answer to this question. If these settings are global, as they appear to be, I can’t be forced to pick one in particular as it wouldn’t serve other situations adequately. The most common multi-SCO package structure, to my mind, is a course with several SCOs and a single post test (assuming we’re dealing with more than one score). I’m not sure that any of these options serve that package structure well at all.
My ultimate conclusion
An LMS simply can’t afford to make singular decisions about how to deal with content. It absolutely has to provide configurability on a package by package basis. Failing to acknowledge that the world of content is widely varied will lead to content that doesn’t work as desired. This, frankly, is why building an LMS with SCORM conformance is so difficult to get right.
How we handle it in SCORM Engine and SCORM Cloud implementations
Package properties provide our ability to address different pieces of content differently. (Take a look at the possibilities. There are more than 50 options for configuring a course. All are defaulted intelligently, but all are also the answer to a question that has to be answered for certain courses.)
Take a look at how we’ve approached the particular problem of rolling up scores in SCORM 1.2. We have options that aren’t unlike those offered in the question above. The differences are relevant, but only to a degree. Fundamentally important, though, is that you can set these properties for each package.
I hope this provides a bit of illustration as the level of detail required to really nail the SCORM problem. We suffer this minutiae so our customers don’t have to.
Note: Don’t worry, my recommendation for the person who sent the question isn’t as obtuse as, “Use the SCORM Engine”… We’re still chatting via email…
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