I had an "ah ha" moment this weekend. To put it in geek-speak, I had my first experience with mobile learning for performance support…and it was amazing. After seeing a quote to replace the windows in my house which roughly approximated the US median annual household income, I decided it might be a better idea to try my hand at some weatherstripping. So one night, I did some research online, figured out that I could handle it, and assembled a shopping list for my weekly contribution to Home Depot’s bottom line. Come Saturday, I had my tools and my materials, but standing in front of my first window, I realized I’d forgotten most of the little tips and tricks I’d learned earlier in the week. But that wasn’t a problem, I just whipped out my new Android phone, spent 5 minutes watching a refresher video on YouTube and I was off and running. Once it became mind-numbingly boring to adhere strips to window, my mind wandered and it occurred to me how brilliantly effective little bytes of mobile learning can be. I didn’t have to go downstairs and sit at the computer, I didn’t have to sit through everything I’d already learned…I just needed a quick refresher and it was sitting right there with me in my pocket. Of course, I’ve heard all the buzz about mobile learning and yes, I get it at an intellectual level. But now that I’ve experienced it, it takes on a new meaning. This is really powerful stuff. A lot of people have asked us if we’re doing anything with mobile and we’re not really doing anything yet. We know that the SCORM Engine works on the iPhone and Androids devices, but that’s about as far as we’ve taken it. The question I keep asking is, "what are the big technical problems to be solved in mobile learning?". I don’t have a good answer yet, so I’ll pose it here. What are your thoughts? What needs to be done to enable mobile learning on a broader scale? Are the problems technical, or are they more organizational? What should we do in the space? Or, really, does anybody have an idea for a killer app that would let me afford those new windows??!!

SCORM Cloud is a relatively new product, and new products need prices and pricing schemes. So we picked one. We promised ourselves, though, that we would listen to our customers and prospective customers (the market) and that we would be willing to change that pricing structure if we needed to. Well, I’m happy to announce today that we are raising prices across the board! You all seem to think the product is too cheap… wait, stop, hold on. I’m kidding. Nobody ever wants something to be more expensive. Soooo, we’re lowering the price of every registration beyond the first 300 each month. Once you reach the "Big" plan ($300/month for up to 300 registration), there’s no bigger plan. We simply charge you $0.50 per registration for the next 700 registrations, and $0.25 per registration after that. So, an example might help here. If your organization launched 1500 courses for the first time in March, you would be charged $300 (your basic fee) + $0.50 * 700 + $0.25 * 500 = $775 for the month. Enjoy the reduced pricing. And if you have concerns or questions, or simply wish were doing something differently, tell us. We’re obviously open to your ideas. Note: The new pricing scheme will be deployed next week sometime, and will affect your next bill, not this one. Further Note: The new pricing scheme is now in effect.  (March 25, 2010)

Shhh. It’s been very quiet around these parts lately. We’ve been hammering away on a new way to work with SCORM Cloud, and, well, it means we’ve been neglecting the blog. This week, though, we’re going to be releasing SCORM Cloud in its beta for all of you to try, if you like. Over time, you’ll see there are many things to be done with SCORM Cloud, but for today, we’re going to start with the most basic. SCORM Cloud will be the new home of the artist formerly known as Test Track First of all, don’t freak out. We know that Test Track is really important to many of you. In some regards, Test Track is important to SCORM itself, since so many people use it to see if their content functions properly. I’ll just say it now… you’ll still be able to use Test Track SCORM Cloud to do your content testing. And you won’t have to pay for it. See? Everything is going to be OK. In an effort to save heavy Test Track users from any thumb sucking moments, I thought I’d share a couple of the basic functions of SCORM Cloud… import and testing content. Import Importing content should be easy, and it is. Click the omnipresent "Import Course" button Choose your file and hit Open Test Your Content Testing content, like importing it, should be really simple. Try this. Click "Launch" All of the functionality from Test Track remains, including file by file edits, saved debug logs, and… Course Properties So, come check out the beta later this week. And if you see something you don’t like or something that you could do before but now you can’t, tell us about it. We want to hear.

We made a small change in our reporting tool in the past month. You might not have even noticed. But it’s probably the biggest, baddest, best change we could have made. Because it fixes the source of many questions and much confusion about the tool just by changing to real-time reporting. We had originally meant for data in the reporting tool to update once a day. There’s this whole technical process where the form of the data has to convert from how it gets saved in the cloud and how it is reported in the tool. We really thought that once a day (and later, every 30 minutes) would be sufficient for admin types. Only, it wasn’t. In part because admins weren’t the only ones needing to see pieces of the data and in part because we’ve just gotten used to a world of real-time data. Our big concern - and the only reason we didn’t just jump on this one for a little while - was that the data transmogrification would throw a few kinks in the works and cause everything else to take longer. We dug a little deeper, spent a little time and realized this wasn’t going to be a problem. We’d hate to sacrifice performance in the process of adding a feature. So, enter the world of real-time reporting! Where you will actually notice this is when a learner completes a course, they can be informed of their completion status immediately. In addition, you can go straight to a launch history report and see what just occurred in a course where there was a problem. It will all be there, ready and waiting in real time.

A year ago, we talked about 5 things every piece of SCORM content should do.  Today, I wanted to mention 4 things every SCORM test should do… Keep in mind, SCORM tests are a subset of SCORM content, so they should be doing those same 5 things I mentioned a year ago.  Take that as a given.  This is just a further set of details. 1. Record your interactions with full detail SCORM provides a way for content to record the learner’s answers (and the questions) to the LMS.  Put simply, do it.  We see content all the time that elects not to report these interactions, and it’s a waste.  Even if the LMS doesn’t report well on this information today, it could do so ultimately.  And from a learning/remediation perspective, it’s crucial that the administrators of the LMS be able to see how their learners are progressing.  Just do it.  Nike would be proud. Now for the details.  Recording interactions can be done well or done poorly.  If you want to do it really well, and your LMS supports it, opt to use SCORM 2004, rather than SCORM 1.2.  SCORM 2004 allows content to be far more expressive in reporting interactions. Next, understand the data model elements.  I’ll spare you all the details here, but here are some highlights.  For the purpose of examples, pretend like we’re working with this question: What is my name?  A. Tim MartinB. Reggie BenesC. Dan StookD. Keith Bolliger Record the result (correct/incorrect) in cmi.interactions.n.result Record the learner response and correct response using a human readable identifier (or collection of them).  Better to record "Tim_Martin" than "A" if the learner answered the question correctly.  This gives the LMS an opportunity to share that data with the administrator in a useful fashion.  And in SCORM 2004, "Tim_Martin" is now a valid response pattern.  (In SCORM 1.2, "A" was the best you could do.) Use cmi.interactions.n.description.  Frankly, this is one of the best additions in SCORM 2004, allowing you to record that the question was, in fact, "What is my name?"  From a reporting perspective, this a vast improvement. If you’re going to go this far, you might as well complete the data model and record the following: cmi.interactions.n.type cmi.interactions.n.weighting cmi.interactions.n.latency cmi.interactions.n.timestamp 2. Understand the difference between state and journaling First things first… interactions are recorded in an array.  Take note of cmi.interactions.N.whatever.  That array is sequential, and each time a SCO wants to record something to it, it has to ask for the next available space (via cmi.interactions._count).  Separate from the N I’ve just mentioned, though, is the identifier of the interaction… cmi.interactions.n.ID. If a piece of content wants to record a 10 question test and have a slot for each of the 10 questions, it can do that, even if they allow the user to update their answers.  It would do so by cycling through the existing interactions and examining their cmi.interactions.n.ID to see if it matches the one that needs to be updated.  This technique of updating a given interactions values by cycling through the array and resetting those values is called "state" or "stateful".  The recorded interaction indicates the current state of those values.  It also eliminates any prior values that may have been recorded.  State is a valid approach to recording interactions. On the other hand, the array allows for you to simply add another value to the interactions array rather than seeking out the old array location and overwriting it.  In this case, the content would simply request the cmi.interactions._count value and record the new interaction data in that slot of the array.  In using this journaling technique, all of the historical values for that interaction are maintained.  If the content wishes to retrieve those values, say on relaunch of the content, though, it has to be more intelligent about discerning which of the answers was most recently given. Note, both journaling and state are valid option.  It’s crucial, though, that the content manage it’s concept of cmi.interactions.n.ID well though.  A piece of content that uses a new ID each time it reports and interaction is not properly journaling, because the association between multiple answers of the same question is lost. 3. Set completion status and success status In SCORM 1.2, completion status and success status were rolled up into a single entity, cmi.core.lesson_status.  It had six potential values, including completed, incomplete, passed, failed.  In this world, it was impossible for the content to tell the LMS if a failed status meant that the user should be allowed to take the content again or not.  Was it failed because they hadn’t finished?  Who knew? SCORM 2004, though, separates the concepts of passing and completing using two distinct data model elements: cmi.complete_status (completed, incomplete, or unknown) cmi.success_status (passed, failed, unknown) This allows the content to be more expressive about whether a failure was final.  Each content vendor is welcome to their own interpretation here, but making use of both completion_status and success_status is important in SCORM 2004. 4. Post a score Lastly, be sure to post a score. It’s such a simple thing to do, and it’s hugely useful to the LMS. Take note, in SCORM 2004, the posting of a score should look like this for a 10 question test on which you got 8 right. Set cmi.score.raw to 8 Set cmi.score.min to 0 Set cmi.score.max to 10 Set cmi.score.scaled to 0.8

Consider this post a teaser for some big news to come. We’re ramping up on a new project that you’ll be quite interested in if you follow this blog. Stay tuned. We’re going to be needing your help…yes, you should be flashing back to the teachers calling on you in class right about now!

The Big Announcement Well, here it is, the big announcement we hinted at with the obscure name "Project Tin Can". Rustici Software as been hired by ADL to help produce the successor to SCORM. For the next year, we will be conducting outreach, gathering requirements, proposing solutions and developing prototypes of a new "Experience API". Is this "SCORM 2.0″? Well, kinda sorta, but not really. This is much bigger. Just what this successor is and what it will be called isn’t formally decided yet. One thing is for certain though, ADL is thinking big. The "Experience API" is just one part of a larger framework that encapsulates all aspects of learning. It is an exciting time and we’re happy to be playing a big part in it. You can read all about it at http://www.scorm.com/tincan. The first phase of this project is all about outreach. That means you’re going to be hearing from us and we need your help. We’re not defining the next generation…you are! For now, check out the project site. You’ll find a collaboration area where you can vote on existing ideas, submit new ideas and participate in discussions. That’s just the start. Expect to hear a lot more from us over the next few months. We will be recruiting people to provide use cases and one-on-one interviews as well as highlighting particular areas for discussion. To stay up to date with the latest progress, you can: Follow us on twitter @projecttincan Follow the RSS feed or get email notifications on this blog Sign up for the feedback site and get notifications when changes are made

Project Tin Can isn’t about us…it’s about you. We know SCORM, but that’s about all (ok, well, I make a mean chocolate chip cookie too). It’s you guys who know what learning is all about. You know how organizations need to train in the future. You have the ideas about how mobile learning, games, simulations, informal learning, etc are changing your worlds. We need you to tell us. We want to know how you see learning evolving. What technologies are most impactful? What are some ways people are thinking outside the box? What does your ideal world look like? What new and innovative approaches have you seen? Tell us what’s important in your corner of the world. Your perspective is as unique as Tim’s taste in music…and we want to hear it (unlike Tim’s music). If you’d be willing to give us 15 minutes of your time to have an impact on the future of learning, please let us know. Our goal is to do at least 100 interviews in the next couple months. 15 minutes on the phone not your thing? Head over to the Project Tin Can discussion board and vote/comment/submit…make your voice heard. More of the paper writing type, send those over too. We’ll incorporate any feedback you have to offer. Just drop us a line.

We’ve been talking to a lot of people about Project Tin Can and we’ve been hearing a lot of "Didn’t you just do that with the LETSI RTWS project?". Well, kinda, sorta, but not really. Here’s the difference…. LETSI RTWS is about right now. Project Tin Can is about the future. RTWS is about improving the technical implementation SCORM. Tin Can is about increasing the scope of what can be done. The LETSI RTWS project set out to solve a number of shortcomings of SCORM with a common sense solution that everybody agreed needed to be implemented (namely a web services interface for SCORM run-time communication). RTWS is ready to be implemented now, and a number of vendors are already jumping on the bandwagon (SCORM Engine and Cloud updates with RTWS are due in the next few weeks). RTWS solves many problems with the technical implementation of the current specification. It drastically expands the scope of what can be done with SCORM, but it doesn’t expand the scope of what SCORM does. In other words, RTWS removes many technical barriers to implementing things like remotely hosted content, offline/occasionally connected devices, serious games and simulations. However, fundamentally, RTWS is still doing the same thing as SCORM (tracking learner progress through e-learning content), it just does so in a different way. With Project Tin Can, we are tasked to dream big. We’re thinking beyond SCORM and into the future. Project Tin Can is all about imagining what can be done and charting a course to get there. That is why it is so important to get your feedback. Our imaginations are only so big…but collectively we can paint a picture of greatness. So, tell us, what should the world look like in 5 years? What can we do besides record the fact that somebody flipped through a pager-turner? How will people be learning, and what should we do with this knowledge? How does learning data need to interact with other data? Which systems should be talking? How does learning relate to the rest of the world? This is all part of ADL’s Future Learning Experience project. It is just getting started (with Project Tin Can). For some more context, check out this post from ADL’s Community Manager, Aaron Silvers.

We’re off and running with Project Tin Can, and the community response has been overwhelmingly positive. As of this morning, we’ve: Uncovered 109 ideas, received 1149 votes on those ideas, from 162 different users, 35 of whom have volunteered for 1-on-1 interviews We still want to hear from you too though! There’s plenty of time left to submit feedback, but don’t wait too long. We will start summarizing feedback and moving on to technical designs towards the end of Feb. But please don’t procrastinate, contribute to the discussion today.