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

Blackboard is big time. Blackboard Learn™ leads the higher education learning management world. Blackboard Learn serves more than 20 million learners. And starting in 2011 (or thereabouts), Blackboard is going to be rocking the SCORM Engine in Blackboard Learn. We are nothing short of thrilled to announce that Blackboard has signed a long term agreement with Rustici Software to deliver all SCORM and AICC based material in Blackboard Learn, their flagship product. Ultimately, we’ll let Blackboard tell their story of why they opted to go with the SCORM Engine, but this is what we know. Blackboard had a prior SCORM delivery setup based on an open source SCORM implementation, and they found it to be inadequate in supporting their customers. Blackboard considered building their own SCORM implementation, but realized they could do it better and more cost effectively by working with us. Blackboard considered other commercial SCORM technology… briefly. Blackboard’s adoption of our rock solid SCORM technology will make things better for Blackboard learners and those people who provide content to Blackboard. This is a huge step for us as well toward one of our long term goals: Rustici Software would like to provide the technology that makes every SCORM transaction go. Consider this an invitation to all of the big LMS providers. Each LMS provider that adopts the SCORM Engine reduces the pain associated with eLearning for the industry as a whole. Blackboard’s adoption of the SCORM Engine is a big step toward our goal. For more on Blackboard’s commitment to SCORM and open standards in general, check out today’s blog posts by Ray Henderson and John Fontaine.

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

Yup, we’ll admit it, there’s been more than a few times we’ve asked for your feedback to shape the future of scorm…and yet, not much progress has been made. There’s this post, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and even this one. If it seems like a lot of "here comes the next SCORM", you’re right, there’s been a lot of talk and precious little action. With the exception of the LETSI RTWS specification, not much has happened in the SCORM world for the past few years. But it’s not all for naught. Those earlier calls for feedback (especially the ones from LETSI) resulted in an enormous collection of data about what the industry needs to move forward. All of that feedback has been cataloged and is serving as a primary source of input into Project Tin Can. Is it for real this time? We think so. Either way, we’re charging full speed ahead and we hope you’ll come along for the ride.

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.

It’s that time again…we just announced the availability of our latest SCORM Engine version, v2010.1. And, yes, I know you’re thinking: "BUT, it’s 2011 now dummy". Of course, you’re right, but only because this blog post was delayed a few days while we migrated our site to a new server…I promise, we really did put it out in 2010 . But, really, who cares about the name? There’s some really good stuff in this release. You can find the full release notes from either our SCORM Engine History page or on our support site (you do know you can subscribe to product notifications there, right?). I’m most excited about the two new standards we now support: LETSI RTWS and PENS. LETSI RTWS is a web services communication framework that alleviates some of the common technical barriers SCORM imposes on content deployments. RTWS is a huge step towards enabling remote content hosting, games, simulations, virtual worlds, offline content, secure communications and mobile delivery. PENS is a standard that allows for the automatic publishing and import of content. With a PENS enabled authoring tool, you can publish new or updated content to your LMS with a single click.

Editor’s Note: Here on February 23, we’re getting closer to hiring folks.  If you think you’re the perfect fit, you’re still welcome to apply.  Frankly, we’ll always read a message from a prospective employee, whether we’re "hiring" or not.  I just wanted to be candid with everyone that we’re probably nearing the end of this version of the hiring journey. 2010 was good to us.  We’ve built a great team of technical people, and they’ve built a great set of products.  In fact, we’ve built so many cool products, we feel like we’re not doing a great job of telling the world about them.  It’s time to fix that, so we’re ready to hire. Mind you, when we go looking for new people, we aren’t just looking for someone who’s done this before.  In fact, that might be a bad thing.  What we always want is simple… brilliance.  We want someone who can do this job at an exceptional level. We believe that great people will all fit the following mold: Highly energetic and creative.  Don’t just skip past this and assume you are.  We actually care. Well written and well spoken.  You’ll be representing the company publicly.  We care a lot about how you do that.  You need to be able to express complicated things simply.  Language and other forms of communication need to come easily to you, so that you can add a layer of flair and humor on top of them. Obsessed with finishing.  Tasks must be completed, and projects must be completed.  Not almost.  Just like our developers have to ship great products that are complete, you’ll have to ship great work all the time.  Finished work. More than willing to learn… The opportunity to take on new tasks and learn our approach to them while injecting your own flavor. Web and tech aware.  We can’t be spending all of our time explaining Twitter to you, or what a web server is.  We need you to know some things, and to care enough that you’ll go figure out the things you don’t know. Smart.  No, really, if you don’t feel like you can keep up in any conversation, you’re probably not the right person.  We want you to have a lot of mental horsepower and believe in yourself and your ideas. This time around, we’re looking for two slightly different people, and their highly technical, very precise descriptions look like this: Evangelist. Communicator-in-chief.  "Marketer". Preacher.  We need this person to tell the world-writ-large about what we’re doing and why it’s useful to them.  It is, frankly, a challenge of communication.  The right person will be able to speak clearly about complicated things. Seller.  Hunter.  Educator.  Pursuer.  We don’t sell like other organizations, and we don’t want to.  But we want to make sure that everyone who would benefit from the use of our products knows about them personally. If you are a seriously energetic and persistent person who finishes things, please get in touch and tell us why you want this job.  Please take the time to understand what we do and how we do it.  Understand how selling and marketing on our behalf might be different from selling cars or marketing a law firm.  And be prepared to demonstrate your level of competence and interest to us. You can reach us at jobs+blog@scorm.com right now.  If you just forward a resume to me, I’ll forward it to my trash can.  Make me notice you Tim PS I’ve included longer form descriptions of the work you’ll be doing here below, in case you’re interested in knowing just a bit more. Evangelist and Communicator-In-Chief Can you explain Twitter to your grandparents? If so, we want to talk to you. We’re looking for somebody to explain our uber-nerdy products to the merely somewhat geeky. Rustici Software develops products that help companies adhere to a niche software standard called SCORM. You’ve probably never heard of us, but our little industry holds us in the highest regard. As we continue to expand our product offerings, we need somebody who can explain them to the world faster than our world-class development team can turn them out. This position is something like a marketer, social media coordinator, product evangelist, or perhaps tweeter-in-chief. We’re not hung up on a particular education or level of experience, but some thing we are looking for include: Energy and creativity Communication skills (written and spoken) - Can you clearly explain technical concepts in an accessible way and with some personality? Are you engaging, intelligent and insightful? Tone - The tone and personality of our communication is just as important as the content. Spend a few minutes on our website and you’ll see what we mean. Intelligence, talent, adaptability, intuition, persistence - basically the raw ability to excel at whatever you do. "Web awareness" - Are you a bit of a geek at heart? Do you keep up with the latest advances in technology and how they affect how people access information? Can you navigate social networks and make virtual friends? Marketing strategy and technique - We don’t require marketing experience out of the gate, but you’re going to have to learn quickly. You’ll probably want to become familiar with things like SEO, funnels, inbound marketing, Google Analytics and Google AdWords. Seller.  Educator.  Pursuer. In our niche, people call us wanting to buy our products.  We don’t go out knocking on doors.  We don’t cold call people.  They, literally, call us.  This is a great place to be, and we’re succeeding, but we believe that we could do more.  We could sell more, but we need some help in order to do it right. We think that there are companies, and even industries, that could make great use of our software, but they don’t know how or what to ask for.  We’re looking for someone who can seek out those companies, and thosepeople, and teach them about what we do in such a way that they want to work with us. You will be asked to find the right set of people to reach out to, and to craft the right kind of message, and to determine if the people you talk to are the right kind of people for Rustici Software to work with.  You’ll be asked to act intelligently on behalf of the company as a whole, not simply on behalf of a quota. We don’t care about eduction or experience per se.  The perfect fit will be: Creative and energetic Willing to learn and do things differently Smart Technically competent… selling our stuff requires an understanding of the technical details of what we do.  You don’t have to know SCORM on day 1, but you have to be willing to fight to learn it. Persistent.  You won’t make a sale your first day.  You’ll probably try the wrong things.  Your first idea may well get shot down.  But you have to keep firing away.  And learning.

We’re pretty excited about what we’ve done with SCORM Cloud. We have big visions for what it can do and where it might take the industry. We’re happy to see some others starting to realize its potential as well. From Nick Martin, President of TechChange on Twitter: @ncmart Mark our words. This is a gamechanger for elearning: http://www.scorm.com/scorm-solved/scorm-cloud/ From Craig Weiss on "E-Learning 24/7" (@diegoinstudio): Product of the Year: SCORM Cloud - What’s not to love?…I said it when it came out and I will repeat it again. Game Changer! From e.learning age’s E-learning Awards (@elearningage): Shortlist: Most innovative new product or tool in e-learning It’s exciting to see other people starting to "get it". What happens when you can take learning to where people "live"? Ever year Tim and I get away from the office for a bit and think about what we’d like to accomplish in the coming year. Last year we set a goal for the number of paid subscribers to SCORM Cloud that would show to us that it is becoming a successful product. In 2010, we easily exceeded that goal and established a lot of positive momentum. What should we focus on in 2011 to let SCORM Cloud keep changing the game? Do you want to see more off the shelf app integrations? Perhaps Facebook, SalesForce.com, Drupal or Sharepoint? Should we add more tools that allow for the easy creation for SCORM content? For instance, a tool to convert videos to a trackable format, or a simple assessment builder? Should we make it even easier for others to develop apps? Implement different pricing models?Something else? What are we missing? What is important to you?

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.

Have you heard we’re hiring?  ’Cause we are, and I think you might want to work here. In the process of our interviews and the emails I exchange with people, I’ve tried to give a short explanation of our benefits, and I’ve failed every time.  So, instead, I’m going to lay out our current benefits, as of January 2011, and just send a link to people!  Also, I thought y’all might like to see that there are companies out there that really do have good benefits… Note: I’m going to post this publicly, at which point the people who work here will read it and tell me what I’ve misstated.  Please don’t take this as gospel.  But I think it’s pretty close. Health Care Our primary plan is an HSA.  We really like the concept of an HSA, and the fact that the lower cost allows us to offer some of the other benefits.  I’ll lay out some key points for you, but you’re welcome to ask for details if you like. Our plan is through Blue Cross Blue Shield of TN, and is the P plan. For single people, doubles, or families, we pay the full premium for the HSA. The deductible (which has to be high for an HSA) is $2500 (max) per individual and $5000 for a family. We contribute $125 every month to each employee’s HSA account. If any employee exceeds $1500 in insurable expenses during the year, we have an HRA that kicks in for the next $1000.  That means that a single person has a $0 exposure in a year that they work here full time. The max exposure for a family is $2500 out of pocket, and there are plenty of occasions where they come out well ahead of this.  (In 2010, my family came out ~$750 ahead.) This year, we offered an alternate plan wherein families that were uncomfortable with the HSA setup could opt for a more traditional PPO plan.  The premiums we pay for the HSA plan were simply applied across to the PPO and the remaining cost was passed on to the family. Dental We pay for dental care for families that want it.  Our coverage is through Guardian, and it’s called DentalGuard Preferred. It doesn’t include orthodontia, but remember, you can pay for your kids’ braces out of your HSA. Vision We pay for vision care for families as well.  Our coverage is again through Guardian, and it’s called the Davis Vision plan. I’m told that you can get glasses or contacts through it, but you have to be sure to go to the right place and stuff.  Never tried it though. Disability We pay for this too.  You get 60% of your monthly income, provided you meet the requirements found in the big pile of paper. Accidental Death and Dismemberment Yes.  We provide $25,000 worth, and there are piles of paper that explain the parameters. Life Insurance See AD&D above.  $25,000 worth, and even more paper. 401k/Retirement Yes, even though we’re a small company, we do offer 401k benefits. Both traditional and ROTH options are available, with a collection of investment options. We do match, at 100% up to 4% of you salary. Vacation It’s pretty loose, honestly.  We don’t count the days you’re here.  If you’re taking so much vacation that we notice, you probably aren’t the right person for the job. If you’re the kind of person who likes parameters and guidelines, 5 weeks out of the office over the course of the year might seem about right, but that would include the partial days, the full days, whatever you’re doing. Again, though, I don’t count days, and I won’t count days.  Be awesome, be part of what we’re doing, and we’ll never notice. "Profit Sharing" Yup, we share in the profits.  Of late, we’ve been taking 20 - 25% of the profits and distributing them amongst the people who work here based on the quality of their work. [Note: Added this bullet after publication when Jean yelled at me.] This is not a formal profit sharing plan (or so our HR department/office mom tells me).  We give bonuses, and they are based on our profitability and the respective performance of the people who work here. This serves as all the more reason to be awesome.   These things are subject to change, of course.  So, if you’re reading this post in 2014 assuming it’s all fact, be sure to ask.  

About two weeks ago, we reached out to some SCORM Cloud users, asking them a few questions about how they use SCORM Cloud.  You see, we built SCORM Cloud in such a way that people can really use it how they want to.  The problem, though, is that we want to make sure we’re supporting our users in the way they need us to, and that requires us knowing a bit about how they use our products. [Personal disclosure: My hate for spam and survey emails makes it incredibly hard for me to actually send these out, even to our customers.  We're going to do a bit more of that this year, so accept my apologies... And definitely opt out if you're not interested in participating.] This is what we learned: Our customers are incredibly kind.  Even those who had complaints had clearly gone to a class on how to offer constructive criticism.  Great ideas were layered with respectful comments.  We definitely came away appreciating the way you guys go about your business. Our customers and trialists are using SCORM Cloud in several distinct ways: Test Track, redux.  Many of you came to us in the days when we offered Test Track as the simplest way to test SCORM content, and those bones are still at the core of SCORM Cloud. The API.  More of you are building applications against SCORM Cloud than we realized, and we love that.  Hopefully, that speaks well of the API documentation we’ve enhanced over the course of the year.  Some of you rightfully complained about the early state of that documentation, and I think we’ve come a long way.  If there are other things we could be doing to make building apps on top of SCORM Cloud easier, tell us. A training delivery system.  This is definitely something less than an LMS, but it lets small organizations get content out to their constituents simply.  Simple seems to be good. A public URL.  It seems this simple, public URL option works well from you.  The people who need to learn aren’t always in an LMS, but that doesn’t meant they shouldn’t be offered great content. In an application we helped build, like Sakai, or Moodle, or WordPress. As a trial for our ever popular SCORM Engine. To deploy your content to other LMSs as a SCORM Dispatch.  Even within Dispatch, we’re seeing different uses.  Some take advantage of how tolerant our technology is (when their LMS’s isn’t).  Others want a layer of protection and tracking placed around their valuable content.  And we’ve got ideas about other ways we could dispatch content on your behalf.  Has anyone heard of AICC PENS or LETSI RTWS? We’ve got a bunch of functionality that we’ve not done enough to tell you about.  People are asking for things that they can already do, or that we know how to do already.  We need to be sure that we’re properly exposing those things. Did you know you can use tags to organize your courses and learners? Did you know that those tags can be used to do some pretty sophisticated reporting? Did you know that you could do some reporting?! We really want to hear more from all of you, but without bothering you in the least.  As we reach out to you more over the course of this year, please tell us what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong.  And don’t feel like you have to wait for us to ask… we want to hear from you all the time.    

The US Department of Labor just announced their solicitation for grant applications (SGA) and they called it this: "Employment and Training Administration Notice of Availability of Funds and Solicitation for Grant Applications for Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants Program".  Whoa. I’m no political pundit, so here’s my short version: The federal government has set up a large grant program that includes the creation of Open Educational Resources, and they’ve required (on page 8 ) that the output conform with SCORM 2004. There’s been a lot of "reaction" to the inclusion of SCORM, and by reaction, I mean many people are pretty angry about its inclusion.  Most of that angst, though, originates from Rob Abel’s post on the IMS forums. I will say this very plainly and directly: Rob’s post contains many inaccuracies and convenient explanations of the sort that you would see in a political campaign.  While it is tempting to break down Rob’s post on a line by line basis, my ever-so-brief analysis of political campaigns (OK, I watched The West Wing) indicates that helps no one.  I’ll limit my comments to a few: SCORM is not based on "outdated technology" as Rob claims repeatedly. The fundamental technologies employed by SCORM are Javascript and XML, and both are absolutely core to today’s web. "SCORM does not provide reliable interoperability or reuse."  Our SCORM Engine alone supports millions of learners and their use of interoperable content every year.  Millions. "SCORM has no concept of or support for assessment."  False again.  Please see the SCORM books for details on cmi.interactions, which are used widely for the reporting of learner assessment. Lest you think I’m one sided here, there are truths in Rob’s post as well.  SCORM is not well suited to "cohort-based" educational courses at this point, because it specifically governs single learner/host system communication.  SCORM also elects (intentionally) to remain silent on countless subjects such as wider IT infrastructure and security.   Setting aside the technical errors in Rob’s post, my primary issue is with his misplaced vitriol.  Rob has a vested interest in this debate. [Note: You could certainly argue that I do as well, given our domain name, but it's worth noting that we have equal support for AICC, and IMS CC has come up as a potential addition for us.  We are definitively not the standards body.]  As the leader of IMS, Rob has plenty of reasons to espouse the virtues of the standards they are creating.  Further, I think Rob would be justified in complaining about the exclusion of IMS CC as a potential approach to reuse as part of the grant program.  Michael Feldstein pointed this out in his balanced perspective on the issue. SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge (the other main contender for a standard educational content interchange format) have substantially different affordances that are appropriate for substantially different use cases.   Michael Feldstein, in OER and Standards My challenge to Rob and others in the conversation would be this.  Argue the things that merit argument and take far greater care when you lambast other solutions. Does IMS CC provide some affordances that might be of use for a program such as this and should it be considered as a potential solution? I think it does. Should a directive such as this specify a single standard for clarity and simplicity?  Or should other standards be options as well?  I have no idea. Should SCORM, in its current state, be the only eLearning standard for the next 30 years?  No way.  Check out Project Tin Can and why SCORM needs to evolve, and tell us how it should evolve. Ultimately, what’s the point here?   Elearning standards have a fundamental purpose: to remove the friction that separates learners from what they need to learn. Rob has succeeded in inciting more than a few folks to criticize SCORM, when few of them have the background to determine the accuracy and reasonableness of his statements.  A vitriolic argument like this does nothing but set us back in the goal of helping learners reach the learning they need. SCORM can absolutely increase the utility of the Open Educational Resources produced by this grant program.  IMS CC may well be able to as well.  Let’s move this discussion past politically motivated and inaccurate accusations to something that helps people get their learning.

There are so many channels now.  Whether we’re talking radio, TV, or the web in general, there are so many ways that information is pouring over us. Like many companies, we’re doing our best to reach everyone wherever they are… Of late, we’ve been finding that people are missing some important things we have to say.  So, I wanted to lay out the different places we’re talking so you can be sure to visit if you care. Our Blog (RSS) Well, you’re here, so you must know about it already.  For the most part, we tell our big stories here.  Big new projects and products, major software releases, occasional client announcements, and industry brouhahas. support.scorm.com Many of you probably have no idea that our support forum even exists.  We’re constantly answering questions from customers and others in these forums.  As a customer, you’re invited to create tickets whenever you have a question you’d really like help with. More than anything, though, I’d really like to see our customers subscribing to the forum for the product they license.  SCORM Engine customers can follow the RSS feed or use the built in email subscription.  No matter how you do it, this is a great way to know about our newest releases.  (This applies to SCORM Driver customers too, of course.) Project Tin Can Project Tin Can might be the most important bit of work we’re doing these days.  Along with a huge community of real SCORM users, we’re helping to figure out what comes next for SCORM and learning experiences in general.  You can see our contributions daily on the User Voice site, and we’d love to see your contributions there as well.  You can also follow @projecttincan on twitter. Twitter OK, half the time you’ll get inane stuff, but that’s the price you’ll have to pay to get the relevant stuff.  Tim’s tweeting regularly, Mike too, and Joe even has something to say on occasion. If you’re a big SCORM Cloud user, we also use twitter to let the world know when we’re having issues or changes.  @scormcloud is pretty quiet, but it could be useful in an emergency.  (SCORM Engine and SCORM Driver even have accounts, but we rarely use them.) Old School That’s the big picture.  If you need something you’re always welcome to call or email too.  My phone number is 615.550.9522 (yes, that’s me, directly) and my email address is tim.martin@scorm.com.  I actually want to hear from you, so bring it on.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be sharing a great deal of detail from our Project Tin Can interviews.  Some of you would be overwhelmed by this level of detail (on our main blog) so we’re going to segregate it for you. If you’d care to keep up with it, you can do that at http://scorm.com/project-tin-can-blog/ or through an RSS feeder (at a url to be provided in the future.)

Key Points: need to separately track team performance and individual performance in team-based learning need to link incorrect simulator input with appropriate remediation more scoring options than just pass/fail & a measure are needed Instructor needs to be able to grade an assessment, assessment should be in a "pending" status while waiting for grade.  Could involve an "Instructor API" need a trigger mechanism to notify instructors of poor or unexpected learner performance informal learning should be supported, formal learning is still important (Nina, referring to "Hazmat Hot Zone" ): The issue that we were really looking at was, that was an instructor-facilitated session, but it was the team activity that the team could fail if one person’s knowledge wasn’t up to par. So, how can we account for the tracking of multiple learners in that kind of environment, whether it’s instructor facilitated or not, but have some kind of tracking model where the the team itself performs well, their interactions are good, their communications are good, but one person in that case has a failure to recognize a hazardous material would cause their entire team to fail when in fact it was really one person that needed some kind of remedial instruction. So do you hold the rest of the team back, because one person’s knowledge, that they should have had going in, or do you allow the rest of the team to move forward and then remediate that person. In which case, that person would need to be remediated to appropriate instruction, not another module in the game, because if they don’t recognize some fundamental concepts, no matter how many times they play the game, they’re still going to fail. You were suggesting that it’s dependent on the individual’s situation or scenario whether you’ll allow the team to pass when only one team member fails, or not, right? You would have to, so in the real case that the Hazmat Hot Zone has used, the instructor decides if the team gets to move forward or is the team going to have to go through another scenario to prove they can do this kind of thing. If somebody’s basic knowledge fails, then the instructor has to take them out of the class, and they have to take another course. So it’s the instructor that does it. But I think if you had the right algorithm, you could make those decisions based on whatever inputs the team made and the individual has made that would determine who moved forward or who didn’t, and when they did, etc. So I have that case, and then I have the simulation case, from the simulator, because the same thing happens. My background is actually in aviation. I started in this industry with aviation, doing pilot training. We would try the same thing. So if someone got into the actual simulator and didn’t perform a procedure properly, or flipped the wrong switch in-flight, or whatever, there was not a way to track that, and remediate that. Again, it is incumbent on a human person to say, "Wow, you really messed this up, you don’t understand how the fuel system actually works, I’m going to reassign you to a fuel system module." So the instructor would have to manually go into the learning management system and fail the person on the simulator, or reassign the simulator module, and manually reassign any kind of course-work they needed for remediation. So, if there was a way to link that up then when something like that happens, depending again on the severity or situation, they would be reassigned automatically to whatever instructional material they needed before they could be allowed to progress. Do you think that adding the team base components, the collaborative components to the data model, is enough to support that sort of scenario at this point, or do you think we need more data in general, and if so, what sort? I think adding the team base piece would go a long long way, I think there’s a lot of data- model elements that nobody uses anymore, and you know with the current technology landscape, I think adding a team base model and a multiple scoring type model would help, because it’s not just having the team based score, but having the ability to track both the individual’s progress and the progress of the team. And I’ve been finding lately, I just did this giant content-migration, but one thing that would have really helped us was a more robust scoring model in general.  So I guess I’m saying we do need more elements that would account for scoring and different types of scoring models. If that makes sense. Did you recall which data model element that you would have wanted for that in particular? I think from a scoring perspective, we do need some better ways to come up with, we do need some model extensions that would enable more scoring options than just a numeric score or pass/fail. Right now we’re stuck with complete, incomplete, or unknown, pass/fail, and a numeric score. One other feedback I’ve seen, they’d like to see a model where scoring doesn’t have to happen instantaneously, there’s a way to track what the response to an essay question is, not give the learner the score, later on the instructor can go in and score it. That’s really important, our Defense Ammunition Center client is having that exact situation right now, where  after they complete a series of activities, we’re going to have to basically mark them as incomplete.  In that system, while they’re going through the instruction, they’re going to create a plan for an explosive storage site, and that plan has to be looked at by a human.  So we’re going to have to have their content sit there, marked incomplete until the human looks at their plan and goes back in and passes or fails them. In the Army this is a problem because that incomplete score will get passed to Army Training Requirements and Resource System  (ATRRS). So they can’t just leave the Army learning management system status to go on to this next piece.  We want it all to be one course, but we’re going to have to just leave it as incomplete in their record, and then a human is going to have to go back into the ATRRS system, like a human administrator, and override their grade to mark it complete. So there’s also a need for someone to be able to see the difference between a course that’s just not completed, and a course that’s complete pending approval? Exactly. Is there anything else you haven’t talked about yet, that you would like to? I have been wanting this for a very long time, because the old training management system that I had years and years ago, at then McDonald-Douglas, now Boeing, did this. It would trip a flag after something like that happened, to the instructor.  Like in a formal schoolhouse setting, there are instructors assigned to groups of students and even though they’re doing web-based training, there is still sort of a lead instructor that oversees what they’re doing. It would be great to have a way to flag a human after someone’s performance has been poor for a certain amount of time. So if you’re doing training and you’ve taken, let’s say you have 10 courses to complete, and you pass the first 2 and then in one you barely pass, the next one you barely pass, the next one you barely pass, something’s wrong; you’re passing, but you’re barely passing. So it would be great to have some kind of automated trigger to notify a human with these problems. Because the human instructors don’t go into the system to check on you. As long as you’re passing, you’re passing. But there are needs: one case would be with our Defense Ammunition Center customer, there are needs for times when they want to know when something is going on with a student and unless they physically go into the system for every student they have, and check every record for that student’s system, they don’t know that. But if there was a way to set up flags and this would be more at a curriculum level, but after so many scores in this area, send a notice to a human being and let them know that this student is struggling. I think keeping the human in the loop, even in this distributed learning world, is really important in many domains. So, for reporting, most reports are pulled monthly. Nobody pulls reports daily. You might get some organizations that pull weekly, so if you have somebody who gets in that situation where they are requiring manual intervention, nobody might look at their records for days or weeks, or even longer. If there was a way, I guess what I’m thinking is a much better integrated system or way to integrate things more, so you talk to me, you realize I do know what I’m talking about, I accidentally missed this question that caused me to fail. So you just want to, when you got that flag notice, you just want to hit a quick button where you assign me to new content or, we always called it "certified pass," so you certify that you’re going to pass me. This is a different kind of passing, instead of just a passing score, it shows that it was a manual pass. So, you certify pass me and I move on. And for you as the instructor it’s all in one little encapsulated communication protocol. I think we’ve tried so much just to take the human out of the loop on this, that we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. So there could be, essentially, an instructor, API, which an LMS could build a UI on top of, or if the LMS doesn’t provide a good UI, then if the API is standard, then … You could choose to do your own thing. So it would be important to have not just the API between the content at the LMS, there should be other APIs. Yeah, I’m all over the multiple API thing. How should learning happen today and in the future? Any way it needs to happen. I guess, from an instructional design perspective, I love the whole concept of informal learning, and collaborative learning, etc, but I want to be sure that we don’t forget about the formal learning experience, the formal designed learning experiences. Because especially in the environment like DOD, you’re teaching processes and procedures and equipment, etc, it’s very important to make sure you still have a robust learning model. But I do think it would be great to find some ways to account for the informal learning that I do on my own.  If there was a button that could appear anywhere after I go and read something or do some activity somewhere online, I could click a button and it could store that to my performance record. Somewhere, showing that I have done that, and it may be that it only appears in certain contexts, maybe after I do that it asks me three questions about the article I just read. And if I get them correct, I get some kind of credit for that. A big thing we’re seeing a lot right now is community of practice, we’re getting a lot of community of practice, like knowledge-sharing. In the whole domain of knowledge management, they talk about knowledge-sharing being a key competency. So your willingness to share information and how frequently you share information, so if I’m on the community practice for whatever topic, I’m on the SCORM instructional design community practice, and I spend half my day on there answering questions, posing resources, that kind of thing, there should be some reward for that somewhere, somehow. So I guess the ability to integrate those kinds of things back into the learning realm. Because not only am I learning by being on there and seeing what other people are doing, I’m helping others learn. So having a way to interface those different systems, so that that type of informal situation could be also tracked.

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.