So I understand that it's better to leave my 'flash player' as one. But won't my 'flash player' (which can contain hundreds of exercises) be threated as one item by the LMS?
It will be treated as one SCO by the LMS. That SCO will have hundreds of files listed in its resource inside your imsmanifest.xml
Or is it possible to pass to the LMS a score for each exercise in my 'flash player'. The scorm-manifest will have one item, but my manifest will have hundreds of items.
You can only record one "cmi.score" per SCO, but each SCO can have hundreds upon hundreds of interactions (check out "interactions" in the RTE document in Chapter 4: Run Time Data Model), and each interaction can have its own score recorded by the LMS. This score isn't related on the LMS side to the overall
cmi.score of the whole of the content, but you as a developer can tie the two together, just as you would to produce an overall score for the content anyway. The difference is that you have a mechanism for recording a score for each exercise, and that is in the
cmi.interaction.
You can also tie each exercise to a cmi.objective, and each objective can have its own cmi.objective.score. This is the method I would advise as instructionally it makes more sense to tie activities to learning objectives than recording each question of an exercise for its own merit.
You can also tie each exercise to a cmi.objective, and each objective can have its own cmi.objective.score. This is the method I would advise as instructionally it makes more sense to tie activities to learning objectives than recording each question of an exercise for its own merit.
Secondly, what's the difference between http://www.adlnet.gov/downloads/201.cfm and Flash/JS Integration Kit?
Some very major differences. The Plug-In Technology Example from ADLnet.org was created almost a full year before the Flash/JS Integration Kit came out and relies on ASBroadcaster and a series of callback functions in order to communicate with the _javascript_ layer of your content. Also, to make things easier on the communication side of things, we had better luck internalizing the SCORM APIWrapper _javascript_ functions inside of ActionScript.
Now this worked GREAT -- Alan was able to queue our SCORM calls and not rely on FSCommand, which were my two main goals. But from a maintenance standpoint, it's a pain... mostly because of internalizing the APIWrapper inside of ActionScript. If I'm creating a content package with only this Flash file -- sure, this is a fine solution. But if I were to create a larger content package with other SCOs, and mix up the technologies -- now I have APIWrapping functions in a _javascript_ file AND nested inside of Flash. Two places where I have to maintain the same code -- it's sloppy. With the Flash/JS Integration Kit, everything in my entire content package can use the same methods in the same file. It's better coding. Plus... the Flash/JS Integration Kit is actively maintained, which is more than anyone can say for the SCORM2004Obj.as class. There is currently no Flash developer on ADL or employed by CTC (who staffs the ADL Technology Center) tasked to maintain this code.
Now this worked GREAT -- Alan was able to queue our SCORM calls and not rely on FSCommand, which were my two main goals. But from a maintenance standpoint, it's a pain... mostly because of internalizing the APIWrapper inside of ActionScript. If I'm creating a content package with only this Flash file -- sure, this is a fine solution. But if I were to create a larger content package with other SCOs, and mix up the technologies -- now I have APIWrapping functions in a _javascript_ file AND nested inside of Flash. Two places where I have to maintain the same code -- it's sloppy. With the Flash/JS Integration Kit, everything in my entire content package can use the same methods in the same file. It's better coding. Plus... the Flash/JS Integration Kit is actively maintained, which is more than anyone can say for the SCORM2004Obj.as class. There is currently no Flash developer on ADL or employed by CTC (who staffs the ADL Technology Center) tasked to maintain this code.
Thirdly, there's one thing I don't seem to understand. How does the _javascript_ communicate with the LMS? Does it go and search for an API and how? If I deliver a SCORM-package, I can't know how another company calls it's API…
This will sound pretty silly, but if you look at that APIWrapper code, all it's doing is searching the chain of parents for an instance of the API object, and after 500 levels of searching (or some other silly arbitrary number like that), if it does't find the API, it just fails. The good news as you don't have to worry how another company calls the SCORM API. By nature of the fact that an LMS passes the SCORM conformance test, it means that they will provide an API that conforms to whatever version of SCORM it's using (
1.2 or 2004).
the things you really need to worry about are things that are very hard to test for. Cross Domain scripting issues are a huge pain in the butt for me (and I'd like to think I know quite a bit about SCORM development).
the things you really need to worry about are things that are very hard to test for. Cross Domain scripting issues are a huge pain in the butt for me (and I'd like to think I know quite a bit about SCORM development).
--
-a-
Aaron E. Silvers
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://flashforlearning.com
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"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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