Hehe... Always love your input Charles. I'm sure I'll annoy the group more
though. ;)
My problem with SCORM is that it defines TOO MUCH. I think our primary
objective with a new standard would be to make things simple. I am a big
supporter of the KISS principle especially when it comes to standards. I
just built a SCORM course for Docent. I unfortunately had to fly down to
Toronto yesterday to set it up because the reports didn't include my
tracking. I ran the course through the run-time environment and a low-end
LMS we use for testing purposes here. Everything was fine. I was convinced
that the techies importing my course didn't know what they were doing. They
kept harping on about the fact that my manifest file wasn't big enough and
didn't elaborate on the "organizations" node which defines the structure of
the course which they believed would create tables for storing the
information... Um, no. I said "I don't want Docent to know that... it
should only see this as a single SCO. You don't need organizations for our
tracking purposes.". Which was true. We finally got it to work with a
smaller version of the manifest file I'd originally sent.
This is the LMS "mother" syndrome. I've seen it too many times now. With
SCORM, I can tell the LMS almost everything about my course and
unfortunately, course developers do. But why would the LMS care? Because
clients think its cool and because the hasn't been a clear definition of
scope for LMS/LCMSs. It is in all honesty, a hindrance. Wanna know all the
files included in my course? Read the damn directory! Wanna know what file
to start with? index.html! And what if I don't want to use Javascript?
Say I've built my entire course in a single .swf. Do I have to build a
wrapper web page? Why aren't we just using XML POST requests? And why are
all the variables I should use predefined? I love hash tables. Let me
create my own variables and set/get them when I want. I'll have but a few
predefined variables that tell the LMS how the student did in the course.
The LMS doesn't need to know more than that. Charles, I'd even say that
defining "well-known things" like true/false type structures is out of scope
for our standard. It isn't up to the LMS to test the student. The LMS
needs only know the results which should be something like SCORM's raw_score
fields.
Maybe the name of our new standard should include the word simple or
something of the like.
a.
-----Original Message-----
Behalf Of Charley Bay
> Andri Milton wrote:
> > <snip>... We in the CMS space should just engulf
> > the eLearning technologies like a big amoeba.
> > Anyone want to help me define a new eLearning
> > standard? Hehe...
David O'Dwyer added:
> Anybody got any ideas/thoughts/experience with this?
>
> LOVE to hear thoughts...
Oooooh! Cool thoughts!
I think this is a *very* good thing to pursue, but
we must tread (very) lightly. There are many private
companies (especially traditional media publishers)
and committees (both academic and industry based) that
have tried, and failed, to do this (widely supported
eLearning/content standards).
However, Andri, I completely agree with you: It
seems quite reasonable for the CMS community to
engulf the eLearning community, because ultimately
they are the same thing. The CMS community merely
has to establish "well-known things" like True/False
questions, which is *always* done by the eLearning
community (their bounding of the problem to known
content type specific to eLearning increases their
efficiencies in content management and presentation).
--charley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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