"Am I Conformant?"
3.04.2008 - Tim Martin
I spent much of last week at ASTD's Techknowledge '08 conference in San Antonio. Some of the shows I attend as a participant... this one was purely about manning the booth. I had several interesting conversations throughout the show, but one jumped out at me.
One of the "high ranking officials" from another company exhibiting at the show came by and said this, "I've been telling everyone that we're SCORM conformant, but I don't really know what that means. Am I conformant?"
This is not an entirely uncommon conversation for us. Everyone in our industry has received an RFP that indicates, in some bulleted list, that they need to be conformant. The question is likely bantered about their organizations, and someone concludes that they are in fact conformant. But what does that actually mean? I'll spare you the minutiae of SCORM conformance here, and point out a few things that everyone, even salespeople, needs to understand.
SCORM conformance does not happen by accident. It requires an intentional, non-trivial effort.
In the world of SCORM conformance, your product falls into one of two camps; it is either an LMS (Learning Management System) or it is a piece of content. Anyone who utters the word SCORM on behalf of your organization needs to understand it at this level. Ask yourself these questions:
Can our product import someone else's SCORM zip file? Can it launch that content and track a user's performance?
If the answer is "yes", then your product is an LMS for the purposes of SCORM. You might call it Talent Management, or Training Tracker, or whatever, but for those folks that speak "SCORM", your product is an LMS.
Can we package up our stuff and send it off to another system so that they can launch it?
If the answer to this question is "yes", then you are likely producing SCORM content. Your product is filling the "content" role.
SCORM conformance, in either the LMS or content role, isn't easy. There are people who do it well enough to claim conformance, and there are people who really strive for high levels of interoperability. Our clients fall into the second group, because our products are mature, proven, and reach higher levels of conformance than any other products out there.
"What is SCORM?" is a question we get all the time. We welcome this question. A big part of what we do is to help people understand this. But if your company or products claims to be conformant, you should be able to understand SCORM to this level. "Are you an LMS?" "Are you a content provider?" If the answer to that question isn't obvious to you, talk to us. Get in touch. We can help you understand the distinctions, or, potentially, we can help you identify what you might need to do in order to live up to your marketing material.
8:05 AM
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Foray into SSP
1.24.2008 - Mike Rustici
There are a few specifications on the periphery of SCORM that add value above and beyond what SCORM has to offer. Two of them, both from IMS, Sharable State Persistence (IMS SSP) and Question and Test Interoperability (IMS QTI) seem to be gaining some traction. Whether or not they will ever gain widespread acceptance as SCORM has is yet to be seen, but we've had enough clients ask about them to catch our attention.
We are kicking off our 2008 product releases with a new version of the SCORM Driver that includes support for SSP. Version 3.4 was officially released today, it includes support for SSP and assorted minor fixes and improvements. SCORM Driver customers with active maintenance agreements can upgrade to v3.4 and SSP at no charge.
2:06 PM
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You Say Rusticky, I Say Rustuchi
1.11.2008 - Mike Rustici
Nobody knows how to pronounce Rustici, it's just a fact of life. Since birth I've pretty much just answered to anything that starts with an R. We hear just about every pronunciation you can conjure up, Rust-icky, Rust-uchi, Rust-ecee, Ruustichy, Rustic...one client took the cake when he (in all seriousness) referred to us as "Ravioli Software". Now I like delightful little pasta treats filled with meat and cheese just as much any other half-blooded Italian, but come on, "Ravioli Software", did you even try to sound out the letters?
I've always known that Rustici Software isn't the ideal company name...it was just the first thing I thought of at the town hall when I registered my little freelance software development business six years ago. Who knew then that Rustici Software would be bigger than Mike Rustici?
We toyed around with changing the name a couple times. Once we were on the cusp of becoming Learned Systems...that's "learn-ed" as in "Possessing or demonstrating profound, often systematic knowledge", not "learned" as in "I learned how to play pinochle last week". Not too much better on the pronunciation front, as you can see, marketing isn't our strong suit.
I never realized just how bad the problem is until a few weeks ago when a client emailed my partner Tim asking how to pronounce Rustici. Tim responded with a phonetic pronunciation:
"RUST - iss - ee, where it sounds like a waltz, I guess. The last two syllables are both quiet and of even volume."
That didn't sound quite right to me, so I responded with:
"Great, my partner can't even spell it out phonetically! I would have written it out as Rust - a - see, but just start it with an R and we're happy."
A great debate ensued. How do you spell Rustici phonetically? Fortunately, this was right before a great gathering of Rusticis, Christmas at Grandma's! Twenty-five Rusticis born and bred, surely we can decide how to pronounce our name.
Nope, wrong. The family's phonetic pronunciations were all similar to Tim and I's original postulation, but nobody could come to consensus. Lots of discussion, no decisions. All the while, I kept an eye on my Grandmother, the retired English teacher turned author, surely she would know, but she kept quiet as if in silent reflection. Finally, as the debate subsided, Grandma spoke up with the definitive answer, "It's really simple, you see, Rustici rhymes with Ecstasy". I was never one for cheesy pick up lines, but I kind of wish I had that one in my back pocket during my dating years!
So, to pronounce Rustici, it starts with "Rust" and rhymes with "ecstasy". Hard to pronounce, but certainly memorable, it looks like Rustici Software is here to stay. A marketer would probably tell us we're crazy, but as a bi-lingual Italian job applicant once told us:
"In Italian it (Rustici) means 'rustic', literally, and as a company name it gives me the idea of solid, hand-crafted quality"
And, THAT is what we're all about.
8:43 AM
1 comments
The Evolution of SCORM
12.14.2007 - Mike Rustici
This week, ADL announced to the SCORM Technical Working group that it intends to produce a 4th Edition of SCORM 2004. Due for release sometime around Q3 of 2008, this edition will contain several improvements to the existing 3rd Edition specification:
1. Additional conformance and certification requirements to remove ambiguities and close loopholes in the existing certification process.
2. Minor clarifications and additions to clarify language and improve the usability of SCORM 2004 Simple Sequencing.
3. Harmonization of ADL's additions to Simple Sequencing for SCORM with the core underlying IMS Simple Sequencing specification.
Changing a specification always incites a bit of controversy. There are those who say that change is inevitable and that progress requires change. On the other side are folks who insist that specifications are meant to be stable and that constant change renders a specification useless. Both sides make valid arguments, however in the case of SCORM, I fall squarely in the former camp, progress requires change.
Don't get me wrong, it is hugely important for a specification to be stable...and SCORM is. The basics of SCORM haven't really changed much since its inception. SCORM 2004 tightened things up from SCORM 1.2, but the core concepts remained the same. Sequencing was a big addition, but not a fundamental change, nor a requirement for the content developer. The two Editions of SCORM 2004 have been even less dramatic. The Editions are essentially service packs to the specification. They tighten things up, clarify ambiguities, remove errors and increase interoperability...but they don't change anything that is core to the specification.
No specification is 100% perfect or complete. Implementing a specification requires some degree of reading between the lines and inference to implement the authors' intentions rather than just the bare minimum required to pass the conformance tests. The changes in the Editions of SCORM 2004 seek to make explicit what was once implicit...and that is a very good thing for interoperability.
Products that implement the intent of the specification from the start rather than just the letter of the specification rarely will have a problem updating to a new Edition. It is the products that, to put it bluntly, took the lazy way out the first time that might struggle.
Bear in mind that the Editions of SCORM typically only require changes to LMS's. Content by and large is unaffected. Part of the genius of SCORM from the beginning is that is puts what I call the "burden of complexity" on the LMS rather than the content. The relatively few LMS products are much better equipped to implement and handle change than the thousands and thousands of individual content items.
There are those who talk of avoiding adoption of SCORM 2004 until it is "done" and "stable". In the world of technology, when something is done and stable, it is also obsolete. Windows 95 is done and stable. Many people won't implement a Microsoft product until after the first service pack is issued (probably a very good idea with Vista), but after a service pack or two is out, the technology is ready for wide adoption. Even though an operating system or application receives constant updates and occasional service packs, it is stable and useful. SCORM 2004 has two service packs so far and ADL is working on Service Pack #3...it is stable and useful.
It is possible to be both stable and progressive and SCORM is. When 4th Edition is released, it will be two years after the release of 3rd Edition. There's early talk of a SCORM 2.0, 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. SCORM 2.0 isn't scary...not any more so that the new standards for HD DVD or Blu-ray...it's a natural progression as technology evolves.
It may be helpful to think of SCORM as a brand name for e-learning content interoperability rather than a specific standard, just as DVD is the brand name for video disk interoperability. A quick look at the latest and greatest Blu-ray / HD DVD player from Best Buy shows that its capable of playing at least a dozen different DVD formats (go to Wikipedia and you'll see even more underlying standards). Similarly, your LMS (a.k.a. your SCORM player) should be just as capable of delivering the various versions and editions of SCORM. As a content producer or consumer, it shouldn't matter what standard you use, the player should just handle it. Your VHS tapes probably still work and you can even still buy a VCR. SCORM 1.2 still works and you will be able to buy SCORM 1.2 conformant products for a long time to come. You are always free to continue to use both technologies, just don't hold the rest of us back.
Just like you would expect different results from the $30 DVD player at Wal-mart and the $1,000 DVD player at Best Buy, there will likely be differences in the performance of LMS systems. It is ADL's job to minimize those differences while still enabling the advance of technology. It is a hard job and a difficult balance, but so far, they are doing a great job.
8:58 AM
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What to Expect When You're Showing (or not showing)
11.09.2007 - Mike Rustici
Having a three month old at home, I fully expect everybody else out there to get this title's play on the classic pregnancy book "What to Expect When You're Expecting" (that has made every expectant mother in the last twenty years worried sick). But, I'm sure few of you did, and even fewer of you laughed...hey, give me a break, it's Friday morning and I'm sleep deprived.
This morning we're talking about SCORM 2004 3rd Edition GUI Disablement Order of Precedence (sure to jolt everybody awake with excitement, right?).
SCORM 2004 3rd Edition defines specific user interface behaviors that the LMS should exhibit when certain sequencing conditions are met. For example:
When a sequencing rule results in an activity being disabled, the LMS is to show the activity in the table of contents but not allow the user to click on it.
When a sequencing rule results in an activity being hidden from choice, the LMS should completely remove that activity from the table of contents.
When the learner is in an activity that has control choice exit = false, all activities outside of the current activity (with choice exit = false) should be removed from the table of contents (hidden).
Unfortunately, SCORM does not define an order of precedence for these user interface behaviors. For instance, if there are two sequencing rules that both apply to an activity, one which states that it should be hidden from choice and the other which states it should be disabled, it is up to the LMS to interpret whether to remove that activity from the table of contents or to show it in a disabled state. Uh oh, trouble ahead.
You guessed it, every LMS is likely to implement this choice in a slightly different manner. LMS's could currently choose from the following algorithms:
Define a priority between hidden and disabled.
Define a priority amongst mechanisms for hiding/disabled. Sequencing pre condition rules, post condition rules, the isVisible item attribute and choice controls all provide mechanisms for hiding and disabling activities.
Pre-evaluate the sequencing pseudo code until it is known that the activity will not be selectable, then apply the appropriate UI behavior. (The SCORM Engine and SCORM Test Track use this algorithm.)
The downside of the algorithm the SCORM Engine uses is that disabled takes priority over hidden from choice. Thus it can happen that when you intend to hide an element that is also disabled, it still shows up in the table of contents.
The ADL SCORM Technical Working Group is currently tackling this issue and it should be clarified in the next revision of SCORM.
8:23 AM
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DevLearn2007::Paul Saffo
11.07.2007 - Tim Martin Paul Saffo has some interesting things to say, but nothing that jumped out at me until he started talking about Facebook. According to his Standford students, "Facebook is so over. It's 30 year olds."
Has sentiment on Facebook turned?
__________________________
Next great thought from Paul...
We are each creating for Google when we pass them a search string. That search string leads to the ads they are able to display. Great way to think of it... We create something that they can sell.
11:40 AM
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DevLearn2007::What the heck is Facebook?
11.06.2007 - Tim Martin
Everybody is talking about Facebook... I mean, the blogosphere is just obsessed with it... Me? I'm not totally sold on Facebook as the killer app, but I am fascinated with how cultural/internet phenomena intersect with SCORM and eLearning.
Shon Bayer from Enspire Learning in Austin led a session this afternoon on Facebook. It was really interesting to watch a diverse group of learning professionals ponder its impact. Truthfully, more of the people were grasping Facebook's impact on their life than were pondering their learners' lives, but it was still interesting.
10:35 PM
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DevLearn2007::Session 110
I spent part of the morning with a topic near to my professional heart... Session 110 was titled "A Web Service Architecture for Integrating SCORM and Experiential Learning". Yes, it's a mouthful.
More or less, Ginny Travers was presenting BBN's solution from an ADL prototype that extended ADL's Sample Runtime to allow for non-JS based interaction with the API. See more information on it here.
I won't bore you with the details of it here. There were aspects of the solution that bothered me. Proposing a non standards based solution to a standards problem seems counterproductive in a sense. The majority of people in the session seemed to believe this was a present, available solution... It is not that...
I agree, however, that a web services layer of SCORM is needed. We most often see this manifest itself in a desire for a teacher to grade a student's essay. SCORM simply doesn't allow for any communication outside of the browser session. If this additional pipe were opened, it would greatly open the functionality that could be implemented. The student could submit the essay, the teacher could grade it later, and the score/information could be submitted to the LMS without the learner reopening the session.
One last thought... LETSI needs to do some marketing. From our association with the group, we know well that its intentions are spot on. But messages are getting around that SCORM will be stripped back (removing sequencing and navigation) and that the concept of "CORE SCORM" will result in a moving target for the standard. LETSI will certainly consider these issues carefully, and change will come. It is unfathomable to me, though, that so many earnest standards contributors would allow it to drift from a path that they have pursued for years. Interoperability and access will continue to drive the people of LETSI, and the result will be an improved standard.
4:24 PM
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DevLearn2007::Sir Ken Robinson
I'm often impressed by the visionary keynote speakers at these conferences. The themes are relatively similar, but they often express them in insightful ways. Sir Ken Robinson spoke today on the importance of creativity among other things. First, I'll share a couple of pearls he offered...
Our imagination is our defining difference from other creatures... our ability to consider things that are beyond our senses.
Divergent thinking is suffering in our education system. This one reaches me personally, as I consider my oldest daughter's (a first grader) path through the school system. Robinson quoted a study on Divergent Thinking where a group of kids were tested at three different times as to their ability to achieve at a genius level in divergent thinking.
At age 3-5, some 98% qualified as geniuses in this regard.
At age 8-10 (same group), that number had fallen to 32%.
By age 13-15 (same group), that number had fallen to 10%.
And a similar group of people over the age of 25 measured a mere 2%.
Conformity is a huge concern for me with school. I absolutely feel like my daughter's ability to think creatively has been crushed by school. To a shocking degree, first grade has been all about how to conform. Robinson echoes this... obviously this elimination of diverse thinking is not the intent of the school system, but it is a substantial effect.
So, what then? Well, the big thought is, "What's the responsibility of the organization?" Robinson points to an analogy. The company should be like a farmer. Farmers don't make plants grow, they simply provide an environment in which the plant can flourish. His challenge to us is to make our organizations and teams conducive to growth of creativity. This leads me to my thought...
How does this apply to products? How does it apply to SCORM? Well, it's a bit of a stretch, but I'd like to find products and evolutions of our products that allow our customers to be creative in our context. Our work is about removing the painful roadblocks in creating useful online learning. It's a good challenge for us as we define our product roadmap and as we help guide the evolution of the standards.
3:20 PM
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DevLearn2007::Underway
Another week, another conference. This time I'm in San Jose, CA at DevLearn2007. My expressed purpose in being here is simply this: I want to understand the innovative technologies available in eLearning. What better place than a conference in Silicon Valley, right? So, three days from now, I hope to have shared some interesting new approaches with you.
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