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

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

There is a trophy here at Rustici — the Donnelly Cup. Reserved for the lowest rung on the ping-pong ladder, the Donnelly Cup serves as a reminder to the owner that there is always room for improvement. The Cup changes hands often, and currently resides in Joe’s office. Joe prominently displays the trophy and will challenge anyone to a duel to share its inspiration. Another trophy also appeared at our offices recently —SCORM Cloud earned a Gold Medal in the Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Technology Awards for Best Advance in Social Learning Technology. When we capture a gold medal we like to celebrate, and we’d like to say "thank you" to Brandon Hall and our fellow winners. We are in good company on a list which includes many of our customers. What’s even more exciting than our new bling are the possibilities that SCORM Cloud offers to advance social learning technology. It allows you to turn virtually any online platform into a track-able learning environment. Whether it’s using the pre-built WordPress plugin to turn your blog into a full blown training source, or developing your own app on top of our API, SCORM Cloud allows you to bring learning to where learners live. So while the Donnelly Cup recognizes the potential for ping pong greatness, we see similar opportunities with SCORM Cloud to inspire new applications within eLearning. If you have an inspiring use of SCORM Cloud, share it with us or let us know what you’d like to see it do next.

These days, with one click, you can buy a song from iTunes and automatically sync it to your iPod. Remember how long it used to take to buy a CD, burn the songs to your computer and transfer them to your MP3 player? Just think about how much time you saved from this one little improvement- more time to listen to your music, which is what you wanted to do in the first place. What if you could do the same thing with your content? It’s not always a simple process to import a SCORM package into an LMS. It may take 3 steps, or in some cases a dozen or more clicks to publish that course into your LMS. Multiply that by a few courses, and this time and effort adds up quickly. Imagine a tool that lets you export a course directly from your authoring tool into your LMS. One click puts that new course directly where it needs to go. Here is where PENS comes in. PENS (Package Exchange Notification System) simplifies the process of content publishing by automating the transfer of content between systems. While SCORM standards make content and systems work together, PENS takes it one step further. Think of it as rocket fuel for delivering content. As standards geeks, we get excited when specs emerge that further improve the efficiency of how content and systems play together. We see great potential with PENS and are eager to see its benefits realized by the larger eLearning community. So, how can you get started? We recently deployed PENS support in two of our products- SCORM Cloud and SCORM Engine. Now you can publish content directly into your Cloud account or SCORM Engine LMS. Check out how it works. If you’re using an Authoring Tool, see if your provider supports PENS. Have you already adopted PENS? If so, tell us about your experience in the comments section below.

The morning started out like any other.  David decided to unwrap a package of Orbit gum.  We’ve been headed down a path toward implementing a bit of BLTI from IMS (Basic Learning Tools Interoperability), and so we have a copy of Dr. Chuck’s book on our island.  (Dr. Chuck’s tattoo has been admired many times, but today, we noticed the back of the bookjacket.) Well, we really started wondering why Chuck was yelling the whole time.  We decided that we would take the opportunity to reenact this important moment.  And if we were going to have that moment, we might as well video it, so that we could share it with you, instead of just the guy who rode by on his bike. Enjoy.  

Back in 2007, I got curious about SCORM 2004 adoption and pulled some metrics about how people were using SCORM. Well, I got curious again, but this time I took it to the next level. We’ve just published a feed of SCORM Stats that will be updated nightly. For SCORM geeks like us, these stats present a useful snapshot into how the real work is using SCORM. Go ahead and bookmark it and come back every now and then to see how things evolve. Let’s take a look at SCORM then and now. SCORM Versions SCORM Versions Then SCORM Versions Now Then: SCORM 2004 made up about 50% of the content that was being uploaded into Test Track. Now: SCORM 2004 makes up about 30-35% of the content uploaded into SCORM Cloud. Conclusion: SCORM 2004 remains relevant for a significant population, but it’s adoption and usage has not increased over the years. Adoption appears to be flat. The decrease since 2007 is probably related to the more mainstream adoption of SCORM Cloud vs the early adopters using SCORM Test Track in 2007. SCORM Versions By User SCORM Versions By User Then SCORM Versions By User Now Then: About 40% of users were uploading SCORM 2004 content. Now: About 40% of users are uploading SCORM 2004 content. Conclusion: SCORM 2004 adoption remains flat. Users SCORM Test Track Users Then SCORM Cloud Users Now Then: About 3000 people cared enough about SCORM to try out our little application. Now: 21,000 people have given SCORM Cloud a whirl. Conclusion: Our little SCORM Test Track experiment was a hit. That’s nice for us, but for the broader SCORM community it show just how widespread SCORM’s adoption is. Twenty-one THOUSAND people are deep enough into SCORM to use an application like SCORM Cloud, with 500 more signing up every month. SCORM’s adoption is broader than I think anybody realizes. It is the industry workhorse. Some other stats in that vein: About 20,000 unique visitors visit scorm.com every month…that’s 20,000 more people every month who are interested in SCORM enough to go read about it. About 12,000 courses are imported into SCORM Cloud every month. Twelve thousand courses, that is a lot of SCORM content being tested! Realizing the -ilities (multiple SCOs)?   Then: Use of Multi-SCO content   Now: The use of multi-SCO content Now: Number of SCOs in Courses Then: About 35% of SCORM 2004 content took advantage of multiple-SCO functionality. Now: The percentage of content using more than one SCO has increased dramatically with each new edition of SCORM 2004. Conclusion: The improvements in each SCORM 2004 Edition have been useful in making sequencing easier to use and more effective. Or, conversely, the people who use sequencing most heavily tend to gravitate to the latest edition with the most robust functionality.   Realizing the -ilities (use of sequencing)? Then: Use of Sequencing Now: Use of Sequencing Conclusion: The use of sequencing remains similar, but it increases with the later SCORM 2004 Editions….consistent with the conclusions above.

We write about working here more often than we ever post that we’re hiring. Small company, only so many slots to fill, yada, yada, yada. Seriously, when you have a great place to work, who wants to leave? So now’s your chance. We’re hiring. Developer types. All sizes. Bonus points if you can beat Tim at ping pong. Why you want to work here. (Well most of why. It doesn’t mention the cookies.) How to make it happen Some background on how we look at hiring.

The Challenge  LINGOs is a consortium of over 60 international humanitarian relief, development, conservation and health organizations. They provide the latest learning technologies and courses from industry leading partners so their non-profit members can increase the skill levels of their employees, thereby increasing the impact of their programs. While LINGOs provides a robust, hosted platform to administer the courseware, some members have additional needs that require using other LMS solutions. For those organizations, LINGOs needed a way to deliver their course library to the member’s external LMS, while still controlling access to the content. Enter SCORM Cloud with Dispatch LINGOs partnered with Rustici Software to manage the delivery of the content. By using the Dispatch feature within SCORM Cloud, LINGOs member organizations can access the LINGOs course library within their own SCORM-compliant LMS while LINGOs continues to retain control of distribution and access to the content. "Rustici Software has been tremendously supportive of LINGOs and SCORM Dispatch has been an invaluable tool for us. It has enabled us to maintain control of the intellectual property that has been generously made available by our corporate partners, while allowing our members to make independent decisions regarding the LMS that best suits their needs. SCORM Dispatch allows us to accommodate those decisions without costly and time-intensive custom interfaces." — Eric Berg, Executive Director, LINGOs Get the full story on LINGOs and see how their members are using SCORM Dispatch to enhance their learning initiatives. Click here to see how SCORM Cloud and Dispatch can help you manage your content distribution.  

Saw this great info-graphic today from Knewton. There are plenty of reasons to be discouraged by the state of e-learning today, but when you take a look at the bigger picture there are plenty of reasons for exuberant optimism as well. Want to be part of this growing industry? We’re at the center of it and we’re hiring, come join us. Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

Moodle has long been a stalwart open source LMS. In fact, they just celebrated their 9th birthday. In that time their platform has matured and progressed from version 1.0 to the most recent release which now starts with a ‘2’. When we launched SCORM Cloud, we pre-built a few integrations we thought made sense, including a Moodle mod. Well that was back in the early days of 1.9.  For those running 1.9, the SCORM Cloud mod allows you to play SCORM 2004 content on your Moodle site. In v2.0 Moodle revised their plugin architecture. Until now, there wasn’t a mod for the 2.0 platform that could support SCORM 2004. You asked (and asked again), and we listened. The updated SCORM Cloud mod for Moodle 2.x is ready and now available. Follow the steps listed here to get started. Can’t stand the wait next time? The SCORM Cloud integrations we’ve created are all open source and freely available on Github.

On Wednesday, we learned of a security vulnerability in the SCORM Cloud WordPress Plugin we developed. WordPress has a code auditor that picked it up and flagged the plugin. Thanks to their quick notification, we were able to fix the vulnerability and have published an updated plugin. If you are using the WordPress SCORM Cloud plugin, we recommend that you get the latest version (1.0.7) ASAP. If you ever notice a security problem in any of our software, please let us know so we can get it patched up. Also, all of the SCORM Cloud Apps we’ve developed are open source and publicly available on Github for you to enhance…don’t feel like you need to wait for us if there is something you need. Details of the vulnerability.

SCORM is over 10 years old. A while ago, ADL (the keepers of SCORM) asked us to research what the next-generation e-learning specification could/should look like. We’ve been gathering information from the entire e-learning community about what you’d like to see in the next specification. Many of you already know about this, and many of you have participated. We have our solution — it’s the Tin Can API. The Tin Can API solves a lot of problems that older specifications suffered from, but it also adds new capabilities, new business cases, and new ways of handling content. The Tin Can API fuses a decade of collective e-learning experiences with a decade of technological advances. We’ve created a place for you to go and tell us what we got right and what we missed. Click on the video below to learn more about the Tin Can API.   See how the Tin Can API works and what it can do.  

We put a lot of effort into making scorm.com a useful and informative site. We want to be THE place that people go to for help with SCORM, be they paying customers or not. Last month, we published some stats from SCORM Cloud showing the thousands of people who use it to test SCORM content every day. Today we noticed a metric that’s even more fun…since we started tracking visits in Google Analytics, scorm.com has served over 1 Million visitors! Thanks to everybody for stopping by!

We get asked all the time, "What is an LMS?" So, here’s a challenge… express it as simply, as elementally as you can. Here’s my effort: A tool that authenticates students, connects them to a topic, as well as each other, and provides the tools to efficiently deliver, track and assess the learning process. - (Think you can do it better using only 140 characters? Step up and leave a comment…) We’ve been pondering different applications and how they apply to that definition. And I can’t stop coming back to Facebook as a great candidate for an LMS of the future. A tool that authenticates students…   …connects them to a topic…   …as well as each other…   This is where SCORM Cloud comes in. Courses could be hosted on SCORM Cloud and delivered via Facebook. …and provides the tools to efficiently deliver, track and assess the learning process. Assessments and tracking could also be integrated:     Thinking about what could be is something we do a lot… Lately several of us have often discussed what SCORM Cloud + Facebook could be. I thought it’d be a good idea to expand the discussion and bring our followers into the mix. Apps in Facebook are nothing new, and they’re the future of the platform: The next five years will be defined by apps and the depth of social engagement. -Mark Zuckerberg at F8 2011   The social learning platform has created thousands of successful virtual farms and Vills. While many of the popular apps currently on Facebook are games, the Facebook population seems to be underutilized for eLearning. Students and Facebook have a healthy relationship — the site’s popularity was born from college students. I’m willing to make the argument that the blend of eLearning and the Facebook environment would be a useful marriage. Facebook advantages: 800+ million users (and growing) Easy to manage people and groups Users are loyal, familiar and comfortable with Facebook Streamlined registration and management process Frequent log-ins, easily accessible across platforms and devices Every month, more than 500 million people use an app on Facebook or experience Facebook Platform on other websites More than 7 million apps and websites are integrated with Facebook By using Facebook to facilitate learning with students and instructors, developers could create a fast and intuitive way to group students and deploy courses. Learning within Facebook provides a platform students are comfortable and familiar with. Relationships formed via a Facebook-based experience could continue past the life of the course, creating a more genuine social experience than traditional eLearning has been able to give. The possibilities of a Learning App within Facebook are exciting to imagine and one I think could become the next big movement of eLearning. Arguably, this rush to manage learners within Facebook will start soon, and I’m excited to see it begin. We’ve built our SCORM Cloud to be flexible and adaptable with this scenario in mind. We’ve seen several integrations of our SCORM Cloud. So far it has been blended into Moodle, Sakai, Dokeos, Ilias, WordPress and Google Apps. Instead of reinventing the learning platform, just plug our SCORM Cloud into Facebook and move on. Facebook is the next step, and one we’re excited to see someone take. Our SCORM Cloud can relieve the pain of hosting content, managing courses, tracking assessments and reporting grades. Facebook will manage students — all a developer needs to do is plug the two together. We’re open to ideas on how we can make this process easier. Group discussions, wall posts, notifications, real-time chat with classmates, leader boards… the Facebook platform offers plenty of elements that can be combined to create something cool. What could be within this solution keeps my mind racing. I hope that some momentum for this develops soon. So the logical question is, "If an e-learning Facebook app is such a great idea, why not do it yourself?" We have built the toolkit that can make this app possible… we’ve got a lot of development projects in cue. We’ve made it obvious we’re hiring, great ideas like SCORM Cloud + Facebook are why. If this sounds cool and you’d like to jump in and create a Facebook integration, go for it. Where it goes from here is up to you. Are you willing to take the leap and become the first to navigate these waters? We know this process takes time and effort. We’re willing to lend a hand, let’s discuss what that could look like by dropping a comment. If you’re interested in working with us to make this happen, email me — chris.tompkins@scorm.com. Some images from: benstein & FindYourSearch

There’s a new TV show "Around the World in 80 Ways" that challenges 2 guys to use 80 different modes of transportation to circumnavigate the globe. We’re not trying to do that, but we do want to see our SCORM solutions adopted around the world and eliminate the hurdles that come with internationalization. Shortly after we launched SCORM Cloud, we began to get questions from our friends in Europe about whether we were Safe Harbor compliant. As the requests grew, it prompted us to do 2 things- find out what the heck the European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection is and why we need to be safe from it, and to take a closer look at where our customers are located. Here’s what we found: In a nutshell, Safe Harbor certification ensures that U.S. companies comply with the EU directives on the protection of personal data. We take data security and privacy very seriously- regardless of where our users are, so going through the certification process was a no-brainer. And as of last week we are officially certified as Safe Harbor compliant. For more details, check out our privacy policy and Safe Harbor compliance. Looking at where our customers are and the ways we support them uncovered some interesting stats. We were surprised to have so many friends around the world- 82 countries represented. Below is a breakdown of where most of our SCORM Cloud users live. Supporting a global customer base can be challenging- especially when you consider language complexities. We recently updated our website to support 17 translations, and our SCORM Engine now supports over 16 languages. Chinese? Yep- 2 versions. So, the world of SCORM continues to grow and the complexities on delivering our services grow too. We’re up for the challenge and invite you to join us in our travels.

Once upon a time, well, that’s not exactly how this starts. This story actually started about 7 months ago when Chris and I first started working here, at Rustici Software. We were hired to embark on a journey together to find all of the eLearning companies and highlight them in a neutral environment, so you all could find one another. This was the birth of the eLearning Atlas, a comprehensive map of the eLearning industry and all the products available on the market. The genius of our pairing is that we complement each other. Chris is level headed, pensive, deliberate, and I’m just…not. We found thousands of possible companies, supporting a wide variety of standards. So off we went and these are our stories… Jena’s Journey:   Photo from Wikipedia The Atlas is my Jabberwocky and I am Alice. During my journey through the Atlas, I learned more about myself, about the companies listed, and the eLearning industry as a whole. At the beginning, I was terrified of the companies put in front of me. There were over 3,000 companies to reach out to, with the list growing everyday. Chris and I split up the list and I went to tackling these companies, one by one. The Atlas was still a creature looming in the distance, one day I would have to face it, but for the time being, I was only learning. Learning about how the industry is moving, changing, evolving. Companies moving into the unknown to push the boundaries of what learning is and how it was accomplished. The list began to shrink, albeit very slowly, and I became more comfortable speaking about complex concepts, standards and the companies themselves. In a sense, I grew stronger, more capable. All of the learning, conversations, and time, have been leading up to this. The moment I slay my Jabberwocky. And I am proud to say that finally, the Atlas is ready. Well, at least Phase 1. The Atlas is an ever-evolving project, we will add companies as we find them. So if you are out there and not on the Atlas, please let us know. Chris’s Take: To translate, we’ve mapped all the companies on our radar. We’ve discovered some interesting trends and noted the use of the various standards. Completion of the eLearning Atlas is a moving target, there’s plenty of work left to do.  If we’ve missed a product, let us know.  If you see something we could have done better, tell us. If you are a talent management tool, you’re up next. I’m currently looking into the patterns we’ve collected, exploring what standards are used throughout the industry, comparing adoption rates and analyzing trends among products. The Atlas is designed to be a useful way to find products that compliment one another, or fit a specific need. We’re building a community that is focused on helping eLearning companies work together, sharing courses and systems. We’re keeping it free, because free is good. I hope you’ll get involved and join the conversation. We’ve built a commenting tool into each product in the eLearning Atlas. So go ahead, comment away, tell our community about your experience using the products we’ve found. Have some ideas on how we can help the eLearning industry play nicely with one another? Interested in the trends the Atlas shows? Have questions about eLearning products or standards? Want to join Jena and fight imaginary creatures? Drop us a line, we’ll be happy to help. Check out our Press Release for more information.

  My Atlas Haiku   How to use Atlas Enter search criteria, browse, select, repeat. Not the world’s greatest haiku, but you get the picture. Sure, you can search and find what you are looking for no problem, but you can do so much MORE. The great thing about the eLearning Atlas is you can tailor it to fit your needs. If you are looking for career development content, chances are we have quite a few to choose from. If you are looking for something a little more obscure, like cat noises, well, that’s precisely why we integrated Google Site Search. Here are some of our favorite things to do with the eLearning Atlas. Search Criteria We think variety is the spice of life, (well that and attacking the net in ping pong), so we’ve given you some options when it comes to how you search. Whether users type in products, vendor names or keywords, their search will pull up the most relevant entries for them. Keywords can be any number of things, ranging from specific to extremely vague. For example, say a user is looking for K-12 content, their search would look something like this:   If you’re more like Chris and decide "cat noises" is what you’re into, type it in and it will look like this…   (Someone please ask Chris why he is always typing this in the Search bar.) It amazes me every time that we even have search results for the most obscure keywords! This is where Google Site Search becomes a great tool. If we don’t have a tool that offers exactly what you are looking for, we bring in Google results that mention whatever you are seeking. Users can also change how the results are displayed, depending on the types of entries they are looking for, making each search a unique experience. Each search can be sorted by Relevancy, Product Name or Description as well as Vendor Name or Description or Powered by Scorm.com (that’s us!) Pretty cool, huh? We think so too. Filter Options Who has time to search through the thousands of entries we have available on the Atlas? For the more discriminating Atlas user, have we got news for you. You can filter the results for exactly what you are looking for. Just select the options that are most important to you, anything from Product Type, Installation or even by tags, we have over 100 to choose from. You really can have it your way, so give it a whirl! This ain’t your Grandma’s map We have been saying since before we started the Atlas, that we were going to ‘map’ the eLearning industry and we’ve done just that. Literally, we made a map. You can now see that eLearning isn’t just concentrated in one region, it is spread across the entire globe. We have companies representing every corner of the world, minus Antarctica of course. So take a look, see who is in your neck of the woods. Just click Browse the Map on the Atlas homepage.

The best company you can have, in a strange place, is a map. -MacGyver I’ve seen every episode of MacGyver… most more than twice. When thinking about the best way for users to get what they want out of our eLearning Atlas, MacGyver’s advice came to mind. As each of you will undoubtedly recall in "The Gauntlet," the opening sequence has Mac stealing the bad-guy’s evil-plan-map. Without a weapon at hand, he fashions the map into various tools to aid his escape. He finds no fewer than five ways to use the map, getting away unscathed and saving the day. I’ll never skip an opportunity to watch MacGyver, here’s the clip: [sniplet macguyver]   While escaping, Mac explains, The great thing about a map, it can get you in and out of places in a lot of different ways. That’s the great thing about the eLearning Atlas, it can get you to the right solution, in a lot of different ways. In no real order, here are some quick ways to fashion our map into a useful tool: Moodle: There are plenty of products and services built around the platform. This is a good example of how our tags quickly point towards a group of products. Rustici customers: We often get asked to provide a list of our customers. Until now, we really didn’t have a list to point people to. While not all the products using our software behind the scenes want to be known, this search gives you a good look at the many places you can find our stuff. You can find our stuff in all sorts of places, here are the commercially available products that fit in the Atlas. Use any of these knowing you have the best SCORM support available (That’s my biased opinion… I’m a paid representative). LMS products powered by SCORM Engine: SCORM Engine is behind the scenes of LMSs everywhere. Products that use SCORM Driver to create content: Some of the best content out there is made with SCORM Driver. Products running SCORM Cloud: Our API allows companies to use our scalable SaaS product to handle the deployment of courses. iOS: Check out all the entries that are taking learning to the iPad and iPhone. By selecting a tag and adding keywords, you can find specific products quickly. Cloud-based solutions: We’re not the only ones building learning solutions in the cloud. Facebook: I’ve discussed it before, Facebook is a cool place to learn. Here’s a place to start seeing how others have begun to use the tool for learning. Collaborative Authoring: Want to work together to create a course? This list combines a tag with a product type to display Authoring Tools that can be used in a team environment. Have you MacGyver-ed the Atlas in ways I haven’t thought of? Leave a comment and share. As we point out at the bottom of every page on the eLearning Atlas, we mess up sometimes. If we’ve mixed up some tags or need to optimize a few entries to make sure they land on the right custom search, let me know. As any fan knows, MacGyver episodes always end with a parting piece of advice. In this sequence Mac concludes with, Just goes to show ya, a good map will always get you where you want to go. I couldn’t agree more.

"we made this chart and it just looked dumb so we changed it" -Mike Rustici We recently decided to change the way we represent the different account options on the SCORM Cloud sign up page.  We made a nice looking table that would allow users to do side-by-side comparisons of the different account levels. It looked great except for this one place in the middle where there was just too much text.   "The Big" plan wasn’t as straightforward as the others. Instead of just one price for all overage registrations, the price was discounted after a certain threshold was met. Evidently the additional code to handle the pricing complexity wasn’t enough to make us want to simplify.  Likewise, explaining the pricing to users didn’t clue us in, either. But such a glaring blemish on an otherwise streamlined table just wouldn’t do. The solution?  Remove the extra text by simplifying the price structure.     Now The Big plan has one price for each overage registration.  At 33 cents per overage, The Big plan is cheaper for all "The Big" plan users. We like the way the new pricing table looks, and apparently our vanity can save you some money.

If you’ve been paying close attention, you may have noticed a prerelease of our latest SCORM Cloud feature, support for IMS BLTI plus Simple Outcomes. BLTI provides a simple way for LMS users to incorporate remote tools into their system. Think of it as a super-simple plugin architecture. Used mostly by academically-oriented LMS’s, BLTI provides a way to authenticate users from an LMS into a tool offered by another vendor. Simple Outcomes is an informal extension to BLTI that allows for very basic results reporting from the tool back to the LMS. People love SCORM Cloud for it’s ease of integration, but we’re constantly looking for ways to make integration even simpler. BLTI is step along that path. SCORM is underutilized in the education market. This is partly because academically-oriented LMSs have historically had weak SCORM support and partly because the tracking that SCORM provides hasn’t always been valued in academic circles the way it is in corporate circles. With greater emphasis on assessment and measurement in education, we believe that detailed tracking will be increasingly important. We hope SCORM Cloud’s BLTI integration will help bring the power of SCORM and the vast quantity of SCORM conformant content to this important segment. The BLTI export can be found in the SCORM Dispatch section of Cloud. To expose a SCORM course as a BLTI tool, simply create a Dispatch, click on the BLTI button and then copy the provided credentials into your BLTI LMS. That’s it. Your LMS will now be able to launch the SCORM Course. SCORM Cloud will maintain all of the detailed tracking data on the course and report back a score to the host LMS. Special thanks to Dr. Chuck for helping us put this together. To see a list of other products that support BLTI, check out the LTI list on eLearning Atlas.

A car salesman’s credibility is quickly lost when he guesses what size engine is under the hood or what the gas mileage could be. Claiming a car has "good" gas mileage is not the same thing as knowing it’s 40 mpg. A 6-cylinder engine can come in a variety of flavors… in-line or V, turbocharged or naturally-aspirated, these details create some machines that are much faster than others. With cars, more is not always better, sweating the details creates vehicles that keep "car guys" debating for hours. People who care nothing for cars will make generalizations that make me cringe, but nobody wants a guessing salesman to help choose the perfect vehicle. How do car specs relate to eLearning standards? SCORM 2004 comes in three flavors, 2nd edition, 3rd edition and 4th edition… it can be confusing. Nearly 75% of the products in our eLearning Atlas that support SCORM 2004, don’t specify which edition is implemented. While I’m sure the development team behind these companies understands the differences in the standard, the customer-facing side generally has no clue. Most don’t even bother to guess or publish it on their website. SCORM 2004 is powerful, but all editions are not created equal, most editions do not play nicely with one another. The generalization of SCORM 2004 sometimes creates compatibility issues that can be a source of frustration for customers. In order to truly understand if a piece of content and a LMS will easily work together, it’s crucial to know that they speak the same language, er, SCORM edition. I’ll quietly challenge those that generalize to express the details they support, even it’s not presented prominently. The eLearning Atlas provides an easy way to find the companies that know exactly which edition of SCORM 2004 they support. However, if a generalization of the standard is all that a user really needs, the eLearning Atlas has that covered as well.

Ever since we came up with the idea of the eLearning Atlas, we’ve been thinking about ways to make it better for our users. What we realized was, as great as we are, we can only do so much. So we started thinking about what to bring to the Atlas next. We are proud to say that Craig Weiss of eLearning 24/7 has graciously agreed to share his professional insight on some products listed on the Atlas. How’s that for exciting! What we love so much about Craig’s product reviews is he takes a non-biased, no BS approach. Craig will be adding comments in the Atlas to the products he has reviewed and providing links to his full reviews.  "I am absolutely thrilled to work with eLearning Atlas and being able to provide an independent assessment of each product. As a reader you can expect the same approach I use on my blog - right to the point without any fluff.  Plus you will be able to gain additional insight with direct links to an extensive product review." - Craig Weiss We can’t thank Craig enough for the great addition to the eLearning Atlas. We built the Atlas to bring the eLearning community together and form a community. We hope that Craig is just the start, join the discussion by adding your own comments on the products and companies you love!

We created the eLearning Atlas to be an ideal tool to easily find the proper solutions. Jena and I have tried to speak to every company in the Atlas, and we continue to seek those that we’ve missed. This process provides a valuable pool of data. Rather than hoard this information, I thought it would be nice to share. Let’s take a graphical look at some of the interesting conclusions I’ve drawn. The following graphs only include traditional products that can implement standards (Authoring Tools, LMSs, LCMSs and Content Libraries). Here we can see the haves and the have-nots: eLearning Atlas Products That Support At Least One Standard: A look at the Haves: So, what does this all mean? For the majority of the industry, SCORM works, but there are lots of eLearning products out there that don’t play nicely with one another. The creation and delivery of content is a hard problem to solve, without a common standard or model… it’s really hard to solve. When developers try to fit a unique course into a unique learning system… things get complicated. When eLearning gets complicated, things get expensive. The eLearning Atlas proves that there are thousands of possible companies who can create, manage and deliver eLearning, some doing it without any claimed support for standardization. For some companies, the expense of stepping outside their branded box of solutions, locks a customer in for life. We think SCORM frees people to choose the best fit. The eLearning Atlas can help users easily filter out the noise of companies who are not interested in playing nicely with one another, and make connections with products that want to work together. To look at it another way, we’ve currently found 219 Authoring Tools, some being used by 360 Custom Content Creators to make training that will be delivered using 655 LMS/LCMSs… that’s 51,640,200 possible combinations. Trying to fit all those pieces together, each time, is a daunting task and the exact pain ADL created SCORM to solve. SCORM (and other standards) help eLearning providers play nicely with one another; the eLearning Atlas can help users find the products and services that will play nicely with the systems they already use.

Brought to you by SCORM.com, the e-learning standards experts.I answer a lot of SCORM questions ranging from the basic to the extravagant, and I actually like it.  A huge part of what I do is teaching about SCORM. Sometimes, though, I get questions that make me laugh.  Today, I feel like I need to share this one because it isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a question like this one. What is Scorm Compliance? OK, good question.  I get this one a lot, so I have a sense of where it’s headed.  My answer: Is this what you’re looking for?  The distinction between compliance and conformance?  Or something more like this, a basic description of SCORM? The response (slightly rephrased): Yes both are good.  There is a training specialist job interview question? "Which of the following best describes your experience with Scorm Compliance?" (Then # years and months choice) So what does experience with Scorm Compliance mean in this context? Let’s cut to the chase.  The answer is none.  You have no experience if you don’t know what it is. Funny, yes.  Uncommon?  Not entirely.  People think, or more accurately hope, that their products are SCORM conformant.  Let me put it simply… if you haven’t tried, or worked at it, your product simply is not SCORM conformant, or IMS BLTI compliant, or AICC conformant.  These things take effort.  And so does acquiring SCORM experience as an individual.   Brought to you by SCORM.com, the e-learning standards experts.