You know those framed dollars you used to see in restaurants? Where you walk up to the cash register to pay, and there, behind the cashier is a frame with a crinkly old dollar, torn, written on, but displayed proudly? (OK, so I’m not talking Morton’s here… dives… places where they were so proud of the first dollars that walked in that they put them on the wall?) Picture courtesy of Jake Wasdin We’ve been in business for a while, obviously. Our first check from a customer has long since been cashed, and the money Mike used to get started was long ago dumped from a Crayola Crayon piggy bank. But this feels a little bit like starting fresh. The SCORM Cloud is our new baby. Yes, it’s built upon the SCORM Engine, but this is a new beast. And as of now, the SCORM Cloud is bringing home the bacon. While we’ve been eating our own dog food for a while by hosting TestTrack on the Cloud, it’s exciting to have a paying client running their application against the Cloud as well. Anttix was among the first to get in touch with us about the SCORM Cloud, and they’re exactly the kind of company we’re hoping to hear from. Go check them out yourself… Anttix is not your typical Learning Management System (LMS) company. They do many things, and they do them well, but they aren’t spending millions on creating the perfect LMS. They did, however, have a need to delivery SCORM training in the context of their application. The SCORM Engine might have been a good fit, but it requires a commitment, both development and budget wise, that wasn’t a good fit. Jason, from Anttix, asked for an AppID and a secret key and they were off. Very quickly, with the help of the sample code libraries (ask for them if want to check them out), Anttix was able to import, manage, and delivery training in the context of their application. You know what else is cool? Anttix is already running version 2009.1 of the SCORM Engine, and they didn’t have to do a single thing to upgrade. Cloud apps have certain disadvantages, but they also have some big upside, and automatic, transparent upgrades are one of them. Jason’s kind words, however, are my favorite part of this story. Is there anything better than an solicited statement like this one? BTW - Everyone that has seen your product is amazed. I look good just finding it!

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor. -Robert Louis Stevenson OK, fine, he’s right and all. Creating the new version of a product is fun and all. But shipping it, polishing it, finishing it, that’s pretty awesome too. Today is the confluence of a bunch of different work around Rustici Software. SCORM Engine? 2009.1 released SCORM Driver? A new release including SCORM 2004 4th Edition SCORM TestTrack? 2009.1 has already been applied, so this is fresh and clean too. I’m psyched. Great new versions of old products out, and a clean slate to start on some new stuff. Thanks to the guys at the office, and, importantly, the cookie intern.

Once upon a time, there was no sliced bread*. And people were happy because they didn’t know they wanted sliced bread. Then someone gave them sliced bread. Suspicion, amazement and eventually joy erupted. Suddenly, they wanted, no needed, sliced bread. These days, it’s tough to sell bread that isn’t pre-sliced. It’s a common problem in product development - delivering something amazing you know people will want but can’t ask for because they don’t even know it is possible. (Face it, did you know you needed TIVO before it came along? I’m waiting for a radio version, pretty please!) I’m seeing a little of this as I explore the LMS world. Lots of talk about reporting and what should be there and whether anyone cares and who should care. I see admins refusing to bother because no one asks for anything other than the bare bones already provided. I see trainers who would love to know more but figure their LMS just can’t deliver so they suffer in silence. I see instructional designers who feel there has to be a better way to judge the success of a course than just a single score at the end. Lots of talking, not much asking, very little doing. One of the nice things about SCORM (yes, there are a few) is the amount of data that just naturally gets created. As we wrap up integrating the SCORM Cloud with various open-source LMS packages, the question of reporting has come up. Not whether to report, but just what and how to format the reports. We already know we can slice the bread; we just have to figure out how thick to make the slices and whether to toss in some butter and jam. Wanna help us shape up LMS reporting? How would you want the SCORM Cloud (and likely the SCORM Engine by default) to deliver reports and what do you think you want to know? We have some devilishly clever ideas but welcome yours. *After Tim wrote about bread on a software company blog, I had to figure out a way to include it as well. Bread. With butter and jam. Seriously. These posts make me hungry.

Here I go, here I go, here I go… again. I’ve been called to defend SCORM’s honor again. I caught this tweet yesterday. E-Learning in Drupal - SCORM RTE for Drupal now released! Watch the demo: http://tinyurl.com/l9des6 -@BusinessCarrots We are big believers in SCORM being implemented everywhere. Obviously, we like the idea of any system in the world being able to deliver SCORM training. (We like it more if we’re the ones doing it, but really, if SCORM becomes progressively more important, I’m pretty sure we’ll benefit from that.) So, as you would expect, I went to check out the screencast of the Drupal/SCORM integration. I’d be more than happy for you to do the same. (You can see it here.) <rant> DO NOT DO SCORM PART WAY. EVER. When The Partridge Family famously said, "I’ll meet you halfway, that’s better than no way," they weren’t talking about SCORM. Half of a SCORM implementation is a bizarre form of torture. </rant> So what brings me to the point of quoting The Partridge Family today? As you might imagine, the Drupal SCORM implementation mentioned above falls well short of SCORM conformance. How do I know? The screencast indicates that the implementation supports neither completion_status nor location. The first two things I would tell any content vendor to implement in their content would be completion and bookmarking, neither of which will work in this implementation! Truth be told, I’m not really this angry about it. I appreciate the efforts to include SCORM in more systems, but SCORM really suffers from inconsistent implementations. If you’re going to implement part of SCORM, please do the industry as a whole a favor… finish it.

I am excited to be involved in the LETSI project creating "Web Services for Learning Run-Time Communication". In my mind, it’s the most useful work going on in the e-learning standards world these days (but I’m sure others will disagree). It’s fun, we have a small group of talented folks rapidly making actual progress towards a straight-forward solution for many problems. Our "phase 1″ solution will address several of the limitations of SCORM including: Cross domain scripting difficulties Security of run-time communications Limitations in the delivery of out-of-browser content Inability to support asynchronous communication One of the things that makes LETSI unique is its emphasis on developing working code, both to vet emerging standards and as a project deliverable. Today we released a very early prototype LMS that supports this new web services based communication system. If you would like to know more about the work LETSI is doing, get involved with the development effort, or access the prototype to see how it works and maybe develop some test content, please let us know.

We’re nearing completion of a SCORM Driver implementation with a new customer (Honeytech) and have had reason to discuss with them one of our newer products, the SCORM Cloud. If you follow this blog, you’ve likely seen mention of the product here before. Frankly, for some, the SCORM Cloud is a confusing proposition. It’s not like an LMS, per se, it’s a piece of an LMS. As we work on offering this product to the market, we’re struggling with exactly how to convey its capabilities. (Just today, Susan and I discussed, without conclusion, topics like Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, Software Service, Service Service, etc…) It’s enlightening, then, when one of your customers gets it. Dan and Lance (from the customer) were discussing the SCORM Cloud via email, while I watched from the "CC" box. And Dan nailed it… Think of a traditional LMS like a university. You have a campus, classes, students, and teachers. The LMS equivalent is: Campus = website class = course material student = user teacher = (optional in LMS) In a real school a teacher will have some kind of grading system that says if you pass or fail, they will take attendance, create some record of how well you did and what you did. That "grading" is what SCORM does. There are a lot of websites out there (campuses) and a lot of classes (course material). SCORM is an agreed upon standard on how that material is tracked and recorded. So, I could take the courses we created and "plug them into" a SCORM compliant LMS. However, not all LMSs will do a great job implementing SCORM. In fact some are terrible. So, I believe the service Tim is offering is only the SCORM part. So, we can build the campus, create the courses, and get the students however we want. We can choose to integrate with an existing LMS, create our own way of managing content and users, etc but we off load the actual tracking to the SCORM cloud. If we find an LMS that fits how we want to register users and display material but has terrible SCORM tracking capabilities… no problem. Just send it to the Cloud. So, if I understand correctly they don’t manage users, course materials, or even a public website. They just get data behind the scenes, process and store it, and send it back. Note to self: Find smart customers, offer them products that solve a challenging problem, and get out of their way.

I spent last night the Music City Future 50 Awards dinner for the 4th year in a row (we were also just selected for the BusinessTN Hot100 for the second year in a row). If you make the Future 50 five times, you get inducted into the "Hall of Fame", and that means you have to give a speech at the awards dinner. This year, there were a record-setting seven HoF inductees…which means a lot of speeches. We listened to Clint Smith and Will Weaver of Emma do a stand-up bit, pink-boa-toting Hannah Paramore managed to (jokingly) credit her success to T&A and Jerry Bostelman of Vaco even busted out a little Kanye West impression (props to him for actually pronouncing our name correctly!). All the speeches gave me some time to think about what I’ll say next year if we’re fortunate enough to earn the honor again. Every speech includes the requisite thanking of the employees, the spouses, the Chamber, etc. True, but boring, boring, boring. Tim thinks we should do a song and dance routine. That’s probably a little outside my comfort zone, but the possibility should inspire everybody out there to buy a lot of software from us in the 2009 fiscal year. What struck me most about the possibility of being in the hall of fame next year is just how small we are. It’s amazing what a small group of highly talented people can accomplish. I sat there looking at companies with 150 employees and I felt no jealousy. There’s something special about a small cohesive group doing exceptional work that I never want to lose. Now, how do I turn that into a non-sleep inducing speech?

The SCORM Cloud is, well, it’s a bit new. We’ve acknowledged all along that this is not how the learning industry has done things before. We like that; we’re excited to be doing something a little different. It also means that we’re going to be making some decisions publicly as we go along, and that we’re going to do that publicly, with rationale. Like us or hate us, at least you’ll be able to see why we’re behaving the way we do. Today’s question relates to the pricing tiers described here. We chose to go with a tiered pricing structure because we like to buy stuff that way. Our costs for Zendesk are fixed… we’ve picked a tier that accommodates our usage, and we don’t have to think about each ticket carrying a cost. It’s fair to them, it’s fair to us, we’re happy. There’s a little difference, though. With the pricing of the SCORM Cloud, it’s possible that you would have a month in which you would hit the limit of your tier. So, what should we do with that? Should it be a hard and fast limit? We don’t think so. We think that you, the customer, would want your customers to be able to continue training. So we have to decide how to deal with overages. We want the overage policy to be fair, but also to be something that doesn’t get us taken advantage of. So here’s the conclusion…  Up through "The Big" plan, which includes 300 registrations per month, each registration beyond your chosen plan will be charged at $3. ______________ Update (later on the 5th): Our Ombudsman, Troy, called me out for the "cliff-like" ending to the original version of this post.  I would try to argue, except, well, he was right.  In setting the overages, we were shooting for something fair to both parties.  We didn’t want something that was overtly penal, but we wanted to respect the tiered structure as well.  So we went with $3.  Truth be told, Mike and I argued about it until David was annoyed, and then we just decided. And so I close with this… I thank each and every one of you for taking the time to read this post.  If our thoughts on overages seem wrong or unfair, please do email me at tim.martin at scorm.com.  If my failure to close the original version of this post disrupted your life in any way, I do apologize.  It was deeply irresponsible of me.

I got this question today (and yes, we really do mean you can ask us anything…): We are making configuration settings for our new LMS ([redacted]) and one of the questions is: 1.3.5. How is the overall score for a SCORM course with more than one SCO computed? With the following choices: MaximumScore. Highest score of all items (SCOs) in the course. AverageScore. Average score of all items (SCOs) in the course. FirstScore. The first score achieved by the user across all items (SCOs) in the course. Note: If this option is selected, ScormScoreUpdateOption should be set to "Never" and the user’s score will always remain the first score they achieved. MostRecentScore. The most recent score achieved by the user across all items (SCOs) in the course. What do you recommend? My first reaction Well, clearly we’re talking about an LMS that is really SCORM 1.2 centric. This ability to manage scores across attempts and SCOs is one of the things that SCORM 2004 actually does very well. Rollup rules allow the content author to specify these behaviors in great detail, including weighting the various elements and even excluding some. This provides the author with useful tools such as pre-assessment that doesn’t impact overall satisfaction. My second reaction There simply is not a good answer to this question. If these settings are global, as they appear to be, I can’t be forced to pick one in particular as it wouldn’t serve other situations adequately. The most common multi-SCO package structure, to my mind, is a course with several SCOs and a single post test (assuming we’re dealing with more than one score). I’m not sure that any of these options serve that package structure well at all. My ultimate conclusion An LMS simply can’t afford to make singular decisions about how to deal with content. It absolutely has to provide configurability on a package by package basis. Failing to acknowledge that the world of content is widely varied will lead to content that doesn’t work as desired. This, frankly, is why building an LMS with SCORM conformance is so difficult to get right. How we handle it in SCORM Engine and SCORM Cloud implementations Package properties provide our ability to address different pieces of content differently. (Take a look at the possibilities. There are more than 50 options for configuring a course. All are defaulted intelligently, but all are also the answer to a question that has to be answered for certain courses.) Take a look at how we’ve approached the particular problem of rolling up scores in SCORM 1.2. We have options that aren’t unlike those offered in the question above. The differences are relevant, but only to a degree. Fundamentally important, though, is that you can set these properties for each package. I hope this provides a bit of illustration as the level of detail required to really nail the SCORM problem. We suffer this minutiae so our customers don’t have to. Note: Don’t worry, my recommendation for the person who sent the question isn’t as obtuse as, "Use the SCORM Engine"… We’re still chatting via email…

SCORM is a difficult problem, no doubt. As a content creator, there are countless things that you should do well in every piece of content if you want it to work in as many LMSs as possible. Today, I’m focusing on particular technical choices at runtime, rather than packaging or "process". (If process were part of this, I think all five things would be "test your content".) Without further ado: 1. Find the SCORM API well Once a piece of SCORM content is launched, its first task should be finding the SCORM API. Without this API, it can’t communicate with the LMS at all. (And a piece of SCORM content that can’t communicate with an LMS is just a webpage with annoying popup error messages…) Finding the API isn’t a trivial task. It can be located in a parent frame or a parent window. This distinction is a crucial one, and isn’t tested well by the SCORM test suite. If your content adheres to the standard, it will perform well either in a frameset or in its own window. Take the time to get this right, or you’ll suffer the pain of fixing it when you send your content to the second LMS you want it to work in. (And for goodness sake, we’ve provided you with the code for an improved API discovery algorithm. Go ahead and use it. All of you.) Lastly, if you can’t find the API, be sure to tell the user. The user needs to know right away that they won’t be getting credit for any of the work they’re doing. 2. Set your status right away The first thing a piece of content should do with the API after it finds it is call GetValue(cmi.completion_status). [Note: This article is not about syntax. I'm intentionally avoiding committing to a version of SCORM.] If the current status is "not attempted", it’s crucial that the content change it to "incomplete" right away. If the content fails to make this change, the LMS is obligated to consider the content complete on exit, even if it isn’t! 3. For the love of your users, use bookmarks I suppose this is the least crucial of the elements in this missive, but please take care of your users! SCORM offers a simple concept of bookmarking (cmi.location). As your learner progresses through your content, set a bookmark periodically. Then, when the learner returns, be sure to give them the opportunity to return to where they left off. You would expect that level of courtesy in any piece of content you take, so provide it to your learners. 4. Record completion The vast majority of SCORM content is taken at the encouragement of another. In a corporate environment, training is pushed on learners for compliance reasons. In the education world, professors often want to know that the learning material has been reviewed. In many ways, SCORM is largely about tracking the completion of training. The only way the LMS knows that the learner has completed the training is if the content tells the LMS that the learner completed the training. Please tell the LMS. 5. Exit gracefully top.window.close() is not the right way to exit from a piece of SCORM content. Is that clear? Sometimes, content is opened in its own window. If this is the case, then top.window.close() will probably be just fine. Sometimes, content is opened in a frameset. If this is the case, the world will come to an end. Section 2.1.3 of the SCORM 2004 3rd & 4th Edition Specs puts it like this: If the window in which the SCO was launched is a top-level window (i.e., the window has no parent window, but it has an opener) then the SCO may attempt to close the window after calling Terminate(""). [...] If the window is not a top-level window (i.e., the window has a parent window), the SCO may not act on the parent window or any window in the chain of parents. For example, a SCO is not allowed to attempt to close the top window, unless it is its own window. This is one to get right. As an LMS vendor, content that obliterates the entire LMS (by closing its window) is annoying both from a user experience perspective and from a data perspective (in poorly implemented LMSs). Put simply, don’t trash the room on your way out the door. ________ These five things alone won’t make your content conformant, but they will move you a long way down the path to creating interoperable, well liked content. So, what did I miss? Are these things the top 5?