ADL ImplementationFest 2011 August 2 through 4 at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, http://ping.fm/P1cvN

In Jacksonville at the "Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages" (TSOL) conference with the wife. Learning a lot of new free training technologies.

9th Annual Army DL conference - Results

JCA Solutions talk regarding our prototype Metis product and student analytics was well received. It seems that there is a real need in the community for such an application. I have posted our conference presentation at http://www.jcasolutions.com/whitepapers.php

The conference, as a whole, was great, there was a lot of good information at the talks. You can find info on all the talks and what people have to say about them on the Army dL conference page at http://www.facebook.com/ArmyDLConference?v=app_4949752878#!/ArmyDLConference?v=wall.

Learning Solutions Conference and Expo Mar 24-26 Orlando Fl

JCA Solutions will be exhibiting next week at the Learning Solutions Conference and Expo Mar 24-26 in Orlando Fl. We like to use these events to meet our current clients and discover solutions for new clients as well. Feel free to come by and visit us, we will be at booth 507. See you there.

9th Annual Army DL conference

Again this year JCA Solutions will have a booth at the Army DL conference in Newport News VA March 15-17 and I will be speaking at one of the break out sessions. I will be speaking about the white paper entitled "Tracking and Reporting SCORM Data Using Web Services: An LMS Agnostic Approach". The basis of the paper is that developers can create web services that track and report SCORM, and other leaner data, regardless of the LMS being used to actually launch the courseware. This work leverages work already being done in other domains, such as web site analytics, where data about site visitors is aggregated on to a 3rd party site. That data can then be used to understand better how visitors use the site. The same is true for e-learning. This type of system will allow the trainers to better understand how the students are understanding the content. I am interested to see peoples reactions to the concept of not having to rely solely on their LMS to track and manage learner performance data. let me know what you think and if you have time come on by the conference !

LETSI and SCORM 2.0

LETSI, Learning Education Training Systems Interoperability, the international, nonprofit federation dedicated to improving individual and organizational learning, has taken on the task of developing the next generation of SCORM, the Sharable Content Object Reference Model. As part of this initiative, LETSI is soliciting White Papers from all stakeholders interested in shaping the future direction of SCORM and the implementation of learning systems technology.

The official press release can be found here:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/06/prweb988494.htm

LETSI's White Paper Solicitation is available here:
http://www.letsi.org/letsi/download/attachments/4751660/LETSI+White+Paper+Solicitation+on+SCORM+31May08+FINAL.pdf

For more information about the white paper solicitation and the SCORM 2.0 Workshop, visit:
http://www.letsi.org/SCORM2/

How do I make my existing e-learning content SCORM conformant?

For many content developers trying to make the jump to SCORM, the first question is often “How do I make my existing e-learning content SCORM conformant?”

Content is generally compatible with SCORM if:

• It can be delivered via a web-browser
• It can be self-contained (i.e. packaged with all dependencies wholly in a ZIP file)
• It does NOT depend on server-side scripting languages (such as JSP, ASP, and PHP)
• It does NOT depend on external files or external URLs
• It does NOT depend on downloadable components that must be installed by an administrator

General steps for making e-learning content SCORM conformant:

• Ensure content meets SCORM compatibility requirements (above)
• Organize all content files (including dependencies) into a single directory structure
• Define and describe the content using an XML manifest file as described by SCORM
• Package all the content and necessary files into a ZIP file

A product like Trident, from Redbird Software, can handle the organization, definition, and packaging of the content. Once it is SCORM conformant the content can be deployed to and delivered via any SCORM conformant learning management system (LMS).

Simple Sequencing?

One of the primary changes of SCORM from version 1.2 to version 1.3 (2004) was the introduction of the Sequencing Definition Model (described in the SCORM Sequencing and Navigation book).

The SCORM Sequencing Definition Model is a "declarative information model" derived from the IMS (www.imsglobal.org) Simple Sequencing (SS) specification. The specification is labeled "simple" because it defines a limited number of widely used sequencing behaviors, not because the specification is itself simple.

The SCORM Sequencing model defines how the IMS Simple Sequencing specification is applied and extended in a SCORM environment. This includes how SCORM content packages will define their sequencing (in the manifest), and how a SCORM-conformant LMS must process sequencing information at run-time.

Why do I need Sequencing?

As a SCORM developer, why do I care about sequencing? Essentially, if you want to define a learning "experience" for your SCORM content, you need to define sequencing.

SCORM Sequencing is the answer to the question: "How will a learner experience my learning content?"

Learn more about SCORM Sequencing at Redbird DevNet, the SCORM Developer Network, by clicking here...

Content Organizations: Activities and Trees

A SCORM content package can define one or more Organizations that describe how resources are logically organized into a learning experience. An organization is defined as a hierarchical tree of items or activities.

Each item in the hierarchy represents an instructionally relevant unit of learning. Items can be nested to any arbitrary depth and have learning taxonomy labels applied to them. For instance: Course, Module, Lesson, Chapter.

Example organization:

• Course
  • Module A
    • Lesson A1
    • Lesson A2
  • Module B
    • Lesson B1
    • Lesson B2
      • Chapter B2a
      • Chapter B2b

A content package organization definition should not be confused with the physical structure of the content package files and resources. The two are independent. The structure of content objects are defined by resources and the structure of learning activities are defined by organizations.

Activity Trees

An Activity Tree is the run-time representation of learning activities derived from a organization. Activity Trees determine how the content is experienced by the learner as learning activities.

A learning activity is the context, defined by the organization, in which a learner experiences a learning object.

A learning object is the actual resource to be launched, such as a SCO (Shareable Content Object), as the learning activity.

An Activity that has no children is called a leaf. Only leaf activities are actually delivered to a learner. And because they are delivered to a learner, each will reference a single launchable resource (a web-deliverable learning unit).

An activity that is not a leaf is the parent of a cluster. A cluster is a parent activities and all of its sub-activities. Activities can be nested within other activities, with no limit on depth.

Each activity has a title that is used when displaying the activity, for instance, in a table of contents.
Future topic: Activity trees for sequencing...

Learn more about SCORM Content Organizations and Activity Trees at Redbird DevNet, the SCORM Developer Network, by clicking here...

SCORM Sequencing and Navigation

A learner experiencing SCORM content does not necessarily exercise complete control over which learning object they experience and when. Content developers determine how much control is given to the learner based on organization and sequencing information defined in the content package's manifest.

When accessing SCORM content, a learner will experience only one learning object at a time. SCORM Sequencing and Navigation define the ability of a learner to navigate from one learning object to another and the sequence in which learning objects may be experienced by a learner.

SCORM Sequencing defines the behaviors and data model used by the SCORM run-time environment to determine how a content package will be delivered as a learning experience. It defines the functionality that a SCORM-conformant LMS must implement to process sequencing information at run-time based on learner interaction with content objects.

SCORM Navigation defines how learning and system initiated navigation events are triggered and processed, resulting in the identification of learning activity for delivery. Navigation is the process by which a learner and an LMS cooperate to identify navigation requests to realize a learning experience.

Learn more about SCORM Sequencing and Navigation at Redbird DevNet, the SCORM Developer Network, by clicking here...