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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Our customers help us improve our software all the time. We regularly hear about some eccentric SCORM problem or Package Property that would help make the product better, and we strive to include that as quickly as we can.
Concepts of listening and improvement, though, need to extend beyond the core products themselves. I’ve been working with a prospect on the SCORM Engine, working toward contractual agreement. In doing so, he discovered what he felt was a hole in our agreements. Specifically, he couldn’t find any route by which he could opt out of the agreement if we failed to hold up our end of the bargain.
Incredulous, I told him I was sure it was there, but that I would check in with our legal staff at Waller Law. Wouldn’t you know it, the basic document we’ve been using for years doesn’t include that specific right. Well, frankly, if we’re not doing what we indicated we would, what right do we have to lock you into your deal? The answer, obviously, is none.
So, all of our basic agreements have been changed and we’re moving forward with some new language. Specifically,
Customer may terminate this Agreement if Licensor is in material breach of its obligations under this Agreement and such breach is not cured within thirty (30) days of receipt of written notice from Customer describing the breach in reasonable detail.
If we’re wrong, well, we’re wrong. So, changes have been made to our “annotated legal documents” as well, section 7, if you care. [If anyone cares, the annotated legal documents have been great for us. Prospects seem to love them and I'm not answering the same questions all the time anymore!]
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One message I’ve been delivering to our customers and prospects a lot lately is this… partial SCORM conformance might actually be worse than no SCORM conformance. If you’re going to bother with SCORM at all, be sure that you finish the job so that you can reap the benefits of interoperability and compatibility.
One customer who obviously took that to heart was ELogic Learning. ELogic has licensed two of our products, the SCORM Engine and SCORM Untethered. The news of the day, though, is that ELogic’s eSSential version 8.22 was recently certified by ADL. Check out the formal certification notice here. Completing an LMS certification is no small task, and we congratulate ELogic on their accomplishment.
We’re also excited to note that no fewer than three of the first twelve LMS’s certified for SCORM 2004 3rd Edition use the SCORM Engine as their delivery mechanism.
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We had to take the SCORM Test Track offline for a bit yesterday to upgrade servers…apparently that caused withdrawal pains for some. The new server should be back up and running today with plenty of room to grow, but if we need to upgrade again, we’ll be sure to form a support group for the John’s of the world.
My name is John, and I’m a TestTrack-a-holic. I think it was the great hair band Cinderella that sang, “Don’t know what you got till it’s gone”.
After spending the entire day without Test Track, I realize how much life sucks without it. Having to test all day on [major LMS provider name omitted] was not fun.
thanks guys,
Rustici Addict #871
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Getting on the federal government’s GSA schedule is a pain in the neck. Luckily we have a great assistant in Jean to trek through all the rigamarole. Step #472 Part Q involves a thorough investigation of your company’s background and success in working with clients. Part of this background check is a survey of existing clients conducted by Dun and Bradstreet’s Open Ratings program. This survey seeks our clients’ opinions on everything about our business from reliability and responsiveness to product quality and business relations. We’re proud, but not surprised, that we earned a score of 96, putting us in the top tier of all evaluated companies. We know that we have very happy clients, but it’s nice to have somebody else confirm and publicize it.
For us, customer service isn’t about a 12-step quality improvement program, formal policies or sending out a monthly newsletter, it’s more about just doing what’s right. Our clients pay for and receive top of the line solutions. Along with those solutions comes top of the line service and support. We’re a small company and maybe we’re a bit old fashioned, but I believe that any of our customers should be able to pick up the phone and chat with Tim or I about whatever is on their mind and that we should do whatever it takes to ensure their satisfaction. The customer may not always be right, but the customer always deserves to be heard and have his problems addressed to the best of our abilities. D&B only surveyed 20 customers, but had they surveyed them all I’m confident our rating would remain high. Many would suggest that such an open service-oriented business model won’t scale well and would provide a huge drain on valuable internal resources. So far that hasn’t been the case, we currently have about 100 customers using our SCORM products. These products reach millions of learners and yet our support “burden” has remained minimal. I’ve been reflecting a bit on how we pull this off, how does such a small company exceptionally serve so many customers? The quick answer is that our products just work. We take a lot of pride in producing high quality software which doesn’t need a lot of attention. We’re tightly specialized and deeply knowledgeable so we can be very focused and exceptionally good at what we do. We also hire tremendous personnel, without them, we could never achieve all that we have.
You can see the details of our Open Ratings evaluation on their website at: https://prod.openratings.com/certified/index.pl?page=duns&orderid=1176041.
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