Over the past couple of months, I’ve had the privilege of talking to many of you about your ideas for what should be done beyond SCORM, and reading ideas and comments from even more of you.  Thank you! I’m sure there are many of you out there, who have ideas about the future of learning, who will be impacted by the decisions made in this project, who have yet to speak up.  And to you I say: now is the time.  In March we’ll be moving on to solving the problems and use cases that have been raised in phase 1.  We’ll still want your input, but we’ll be looking for how instead of what and why. So if it’s been a while since you’ve looked at our forum, or if you haven’t yet, please drop by and make your voice heard.  There is still time to talk too — whether we haven’t talked yet, or if there is just something you want to follow up on.  Please also have a look at the interviews we’ve started to post, they might spark some thoughts you want to share.

We’re pretty excited about the potential (and ever growing reality) of the SCORM Cloud. Over the last year or two, besides putting the SCORM Cloud services out there for use, we created tools to plug into it. The biggest of these is the SCORM Cloud website. Besides the SCORM Cloud site, we produced integrations for open source learning systems such as Moodle and Sakai, we created a plugin that integrates with WordPress, and we even created an application to work within the Google Apps for Domains. But this isn’t about those applications. This is about the code behind those applications. Each of those integrations includes a key element that aids in the integration process. They all use an API library to communicate with the SCORM Cloud. Over the years, we have written a few libraries to make working with the API easier. These libraries cover 4 different languages: Java, C#, Python, and PHP. After 18 months of building libraries that sort of look alike and sort of cover all the basic functionalities of the SCORM Cloud, we found that maintaining these libraries was becoming difficult, and using them was more difficult than it needed to be. We therefore spent the last month creating some uniformity across the libraries and filling out basic functions where they were lacking. We have also created and filled in samples for the basic calls in each of the languages so that you can see how things should work using the libraries. We also have new documentation available for building integrations. The new API documentation hasn’t really changed much in content, but the libraries documentation now covers the calls that exist uniformly across all libraries. In addition, we have put all of the libraries out on a public repository on github, where anyone can download them and even contribute to the projects. The libraries don’t yet provide exhaustive coverage of the full breadth of the SCORM Cloud API, but they do cover enough to create a well functioning application capable of managing courses and training via the SCORM Cloud. (As a hint, the Java library is most complete - that’s what our SCORM Cloud site uses.) With that said, we welcome input about areas that are lacking or could use improvement. Whether you fill in the holes or you just let us know what they are, we want these libraries to be living projects and we want them to be extremely useful and effective. If you are new to developing for the SCORM Cloud, the best place to start is here.  If  you have ideas, comments, or questions, then the forums are a great place for you.  We want to know how you want to use the SCORM Cloud.  Don’t be a stranger.

Like so many organizations in and around Washington DC, ADL has a messaging problem. Like so many organizations in and around Washington DC, ADL serves many masters. Like so many organizations in and around Washington DC, ADL’s messages are best understood through the filter of a trained professional. Call me SCORM’s James Carville, if you please. The Noise If you read every comment from ADL’s people and the responses to them, you get noise. "We’re doing more to support SCORM"… "SCORM isn’t being evolved"… "We’re updating the SCORM books"… "SCORM is going to ISO"… "Introducing the Future Learning Experience Project"… "Participate in Project Tin Can"… "AICC CMI 5 is defining a new data model"… "Check out LETSI RTWS". Without context, that looks like a big fat mess. It looks a bit directionless. But don’t despair, ye fans of SCORM. It’s actually laced with a lot of good news. The Signal ADL is doing the right things to support SCORM in its current form going forward, in the best ways it can as governed by its many masters. ADL is pushing SCORM forward in leaps small and large (short term and long), but its many masters make continued use of the name SCORM difficult. ADL hopes to work with willing collaborators to create the best learning standards. Context and Background: The Noise Source "If you serve too many masters, you’ll soon suffer." - Homer As a government organization, ADL’s masters are many and their interests all impact ADL’s ability to maneuver. Master 1: The Boss, er, the Pentagon From Day 1, ADL has existed to better prepare the warfighter. Give credit to the folks at the Pentagon, they take a broad view of preparing the warfighter, and the eLearning community has benefited from that in the shape of SCORM as it is today. Rightly so, the Pentagon leadership doesn’t want to support a static standard, so they’ve asked for what comes next. ADL has laid out the "Future Learning Experience Project", and it will build upon the platform laid by SCORM to further the support of the warfighter as we move toward 2025. I have no doubt that "FLEX" will also support learners around the world effectively. Our work with Project Tin Can gives us an early look at this work. FLEX builds upon the core concepts that led to the creation of SCORM 10 years ago, while adjusting for the inevitable changes in technology. This is good news of the highest order for those who care about SCORM. SCORM, "the name", may or may not move forward, but the concepts and the platform inevitably will. And it will do so with ADL’s financial and technical support. Master 2: The Financiers Government agencies can’t just spend their budgets however they deem appropriate; they have to spend money on exactly what it was allocated for. People refer to this financial allocation as the "color of money". ADL is funded using dollars allocated for "research" purposes. Maintaining an existing specification is classified as "sustainment". You can’t spend "research" dollars on "sustainment". If you wonder why the SCORM brand may or may not survive, please consider the phrases research and sustainment. (Trust us, we benefit as much as anyone from the continued use of the word "SCORM". It may or may not make it, but that doesn’t mean that the standard or work has been lost. It’s continuing.) Master 3: The Lawyers There are a lot of us, reasonable, plainspoken people, who really wish that ADL were able to pass SCORM off to an open group like LETSI. There are many people within ADL who wish this. SCORM would likely flourish if set free. Put simply, the lawyers won’t let it happen. Well, the lawyers and the good folks at IMS. IMS, didn’t like the fact that ADL was handing over SCORM (with embedded IMS IP) to yet another standards organization so they brought lawyers into the equation. There are two sides to every story, but the relevant outcome is once lawyers got involved it turned into a very messy divorce. Unfortunately, this means that SCORM stewardship remains locked up within ADL. And further, it means that any evolution of SCORM is further complicated, particularly as it relates to anything originally contributed by IMS. Again, we reasonable, plainspoken people (including learning tech people from both IMS and elsewhere) would be best served by reconciliation and collaboration. For now, though, it seems that we’ll have to do without. As long as the relationship between IMS and ADL remains dysfunctional, the two significant parts of SCORM contributed by IMS (packaging and sequencing) are effectively frozen. ADL can’t evolve them without more legal sword-fighting. What Next? Well, check back here tomorrow for a line-by-line interpretation of ADL-SCORM-Evolution Speak. Highlights to include: LETSI-RTWS AICC-CMI-Evolution ISO-FLEXification These words are my own. These opinions are my own. There is no official ADL opinion, fact or history included herein. Part 2: SCORM Ain’t Dead: Where We Will Head

Yesterday I talked about what is causing all the confusion coming out of ADL. Today I’ll talk about what it all means. The Brand To serve their many masters, the ADL leadership has decided to move away from the SCORM brand. From a business, marketing and adoption perspective, I don’t think it’s a good decision. SCORM is what people know and pay attention to in this industry. Moving away from it requires re-building a brand from scratch…never an easy thing to do. But, the government does what the government does…business, marketing and adoption aren’t really a bureaucracy’s strong suits….bosses, financiers and lawyers are their bigger concerns. There’s actually really good news coming out of ADL though if you read the messages closely and understand the nuance. Here’s some translation of the messages: "We’re doing more to support SCORM" Supporting a standard is a lot of work. ADL maintains a SCORM help desk. They help vendors and organizations understand and adopt SCORM (especially within the government). They maintain a conformance test suite and associated certification programs. They publish best practice guides, example implementations and other documentation. This isn’t a tremendous amount of work, but it isn’t trivial either. Over the past few years, ADL has been in a transitional phase and frankly a bit of a mess. During that time, these sustaining support activities started to fall through the cracks. When ADL says they are going to do more to support SCORM, they are recommitting to continue to do what they have always done. They are also shifting policy to continue support for SCORM 1.2 (they had previously tried to sunset 1.2 support to encourage 2004 adoption). When you consider ADL’s color of money concerns, this commitment is actually a rather significant development. "SCORM isn’t being evolved" Often re-tweeted as "SCORM is dead" or "SCORM is done", this the most nefarious of the misinterpreted messages. SCORM as it is meets the needs of its initial intended use. By and large SCORM-conformant content works in SCORM-conformant LMSs. It isn’t perfect…nothing is…but with the exception of sequencing, it’s pretty darn good. There are a few places where it could be polished, but the changes that would have significant impact require significant additions. Bearing in mind that the legal concerns over IMS’ intellectual property require that sequencing and content packaging not change, it makes sense to stop putting out new editions of SCORM 2004 and start to focus on SCORM-Next. "We’re updating the SCORM books" The SCORM 2004 4th Edition spec manuals need some cleaning up. There are a few inconsistencies, ambiguous statements and diagrams which don’t meet Section 508 requirements. ADL is cleaning up these mistakes and re-publishing the books. Think of this as fixing typos. There are no changes of substance, they just need to please the English teachers and standards geeks. "SCORM is going to ISO" SCORM is an international standard, and believe it or not, it’s not just the US that has annoying bureaucratic rules. In many countries, a standard must be approved by ISO before it can be adopted (imagine that, they want international agreement, not just the dictate of the US DoD!). SCORM 2004 3rd Edition is already published by ISO as a technical report. ADL will be submitting 4th Edition to ISO to facilitate further international adoption….thus the need to please the English teachers and standards geeks. "Introducing the Future Learning Experience Project (FLEX)" And, here we have "SCORM-Next", only bigger. The FLEX project is ADL’s technology path to achieving the 2025 vision. It is big and has grand aspirations, but it starts with a few small steps. Those first steps build upon SCORM to establish the next generation of learning experience tracking. In other words, let’s build upon the traditional CMI tracking that SCORM enables and track the modern learning experiences that happen in games, simulations, virtual worlds, mobile devices, social networks, etc. "Participate in Project Tin Can" Here’s where we come in. Through its BAA program, ADL has funded us to conduct a research program to define the initial experience tracking API. Project Tin Can is an open effort that seeks input from anybody and everybody. Since December we’ve been trying to talk to as many people as we can about what the future of learning looks like. The output of Project Tin Can will be a recommendation for the technology that will be the foundation of FLEX. It is the first piece of the puzzle: the Experience API. "AICC CMI 5 is defining a new data model" Somewhere along the way, we left out the good part of the ADL-SCORM history. AICC is another standards organization that contributed IP to SCORM, namely the CMI data model and concepts for the run-time communication. Unlike the ADL-IMS relationship, the ADL-AICC relationship is alive and well. CMI 5 is another early piece of the FLEX puzzle. AICC is revamping its original CMI data model to enable more generalized and modern tracking. CMI 5 will be an extensible model that adds support for all the new training modalities being considered in Project Tin Can. Its extensibility should also make it a good candidate for tying in new things like performance support data, industry specific extensions, etc. "Check out LETSI RTWS" ADL knows that the industry is clamoring for solutions to problems they face today. Many of the shortcomings of SCORM are addressed by the LETSI RTWS SCORM extension. RTWS is a web services communication framework that can be layered on top of SCORM. ADL is currently developing prototypes with RTWS and intends to recommend it as an immediately available solution while FLEX matures. Some Final Thoughts Again, these words are my own. These opinions are my own. There is no official ADL opinion, fact or history included herein. In fairness to ADL, many of these same ideas are clearly articulated on the FLEX project site, here and here. I think the origin of much of this confusion lies in the fact that for the last couple years ADL has been in a state of flux without a clear public direction. My understanding is that their course is now charted and from here on out the path will be clear.

We’re winding down the requirements gathering phase for Project Tin Can, and have been making some decisions on what scenarios or requirements are in, and what’s out.  If you’ve posted to the Project Tin Can forum, you may have started to get email about ideas that are "planned" or "declined". Planned? Declined? Note that "planned" does not mean that Project TinCan will directly address an idea, nor does "declined" mean there is to be no improvement in that area.  It’s a matter of focus.  Ideas that are planned will be goals for the new API to address, sometimes directly, sometimes we will just ensure the API leaves enough room for content or tracking system developers to solve the problem on their own.  Ideas that are declined will not be goals for the new API, though they may still be considered while developing the API. Why? When looking at the ideas to include, we consider: can it be addressed with an API? Or as part of CMI 5 (data model)? level of interest (rank on forum, plus feedback in interviews) is this idea going to be more important in the future? previously collected ADL list of DoD needs for the Future Learning Experience project does it fit well with other planned ideas? our assessment of ideas impact on: adoption, complexity, or the -ilities Is that final? We will be delivering the entire list of ideas to ADL, so even those ideas that are not included in Project Tin Can can be considered for the Future Learning Experience project. These decisions are not yet final, but nor are they expected to change.  We are still conducting a few more interviews and reviewing transcripts from prior interviews.  We expect those interviews to help refine what we’ve already planned, but it’s possible we could hear something that would change these decisions. What’s Next? As we move into the technical solution & prototype phase, we’ll be looking for your thoughts on how to implement these ideas, and for volunteers to try out or write prototypes.  This phase will continue for the rest of the project, until the start of October  -  then we’ll hand off a final prototype API to ADL.

If you read this blog, you probably noticed we’ve been interviewing folks to help us with some of the non-technical aspects of our business. We talked to a lot of really smart people and two weeks ago four of them showed up at the office to start work. Meet the Fab Four: Tammy Rutherford - Customer Steward [Super Power: Iron Man Triathlons] If you use our products, you’ll soon be getting to know Tammy. We have about 300 customers now and we don’t always stay in touch with you like we should. Tammy is here to change that. Jeffrey Horne - Web Marketing Scientist [Super Power: Mad Drum Skillz] scorm.com has become a pretty popular destination. About 30,000 people visit every month and 500 of them sign up to use SCORM Cloud. We’re flattered by the following and we want to live up to our reputation. Our website doesn’t always do a good job of getting people to where they need to be and its content has fallen behind where SCORM and Rustici Software are today. Jeff is here to fix that. eLearning Cartographers: Chris Tompkins [Super Power: Surviving Extreme Sports] Jena Lawing [Super Power: Redefining the High Five] In a few days, we’re going to announce an exciting new project called the eLearning Atlas. Chris and Jena are driving it forward. If your company sells an e-learning product, be it an LMS, LCMS, authoring tool or off-the-shelf content library, expect to hear from them over the next few months. Stay tuned.

Back-to-back. For the second year in a row, the Nashville Business Journal thinks we are one of the best places in town to work. I’m not normally driven by ego, awards or praise, but this is an award I hope to never lose. There aren’t enough companies in this world that trust their employees, that treat them like adults and that let them live their lives outside the office. This is one area where I am proud to be different.

If we were a supermarket, we’d have just dropped balloons and streamers on our good friends over at Tandem Learning. But, since we’re 798 miles away from them, we just had cake and ice cream at the office instead. Why the hoopla? Well Tandem is our 100th paying SCORM Cloud customer and we think that’s something worth celebrating. We’re not a very metrics-oriented company. We believe that if we focus on serving our customers well, the numbers will take care of themselves. With SCORM Cloud though, we took a bit of a gamble. We made a significant investment in an innovative product that, frankly, we weren’t sure if people would understand or want. To ensure that we didn’t throw good money after bad, we set up a scoreboard to monitor adoption. At every turn, the scoreboard has been ahead of our projections and as it adds its third digit, we’re sure we’ve hit on something good. It’s been amazing to watch the variety of ways people are using SCORM Cloud to distribute learning. Tandem Learning is using SCORM Cloud to deliver "The Change Game". "The Change Game is an avatar based serious game that will help increase a player’s agility in a changing environment by strengthening their personal resilience" and, in my opinion, is a stellar example of what online training should be like. Tandem needs to deliver "The Change Game" to small groups that don’t always need the overhead of an LMS. They were already using the SCORM Cloud Sandbox as a testing platform and simply started sending out invitations to use it as a delivery platform. So, thank you Tandem and the rest of our SCORM Cloud customers. We’re excited to see what comes next for the Cloud.

You pay for Rustici Software products, and we want to make sure that you’re getting the most out of them. Some of our customers prefer to tuck their use of our products away, and we’re fine with that. But others want to scream from the mountaintop that they’re using the best SCORM conformance software available. If you’re a screamer, then we want you to let the world know that you’re using our stuff. We’ve waded through all the legalese and created a way for you to do just that.     "Powered by" images are now available for you to put to work. Just visit our "powered by" page and grab the HTML or files for print that you need. We’ve provided 3 sizes for each image, but we understand that there will be exceptions. If you need a different size or format, just email support@scorm.com with your needs and we’ll get a custom image made for you — pronto.

Before we bought 30 inch monitors for everybody, we used to print out all of the SCORM specs as they came out. The hard copy made them a whole lot easier to digest even though it meant the slaughter of many innocent trees. In unpacking the last boxes in our new office today I came across all of them. It makes a nice visual for why it makes sense to work with Rustici Software if you’re serious about providing standards support. What’s in the pile: SCORM 1.1 SCORM 1.2 SCORM 1.3 ("first edition" of SCORM 2004) SCORM 2004 2nd Edition AICC HACP AICC PENS IMS Content Packaging IMS Common Cartridge MedBiquitous Healthcare LOM