Lots and lots and lots of blog posts everywhere wrapping up 2009 and making predictions for 2010. A key thing I see popping up frequently on lists from e-learning consultants is the idea of learning moving from the highly controlled environment of the LMS to the less controllable (and more mobile) web. Social/informal/self-directed/ubiquitous learning is about as buzzy as words get these days. Which certainly leaves learning departments in a bit of a bind. They’re trying to show value for what they do and ensure certain specific things are being taught/learned/shared. There’s a push toward interoperability of systems within a company (where’s the LMS fit in?) and sensitivity to the high costs of pretty much everything. Many are attempting to embrace the new social movement, but scrambling to figure out how to show ROI. As an avid life-long self-directed learner and strong believer in weak central control, I’m all for the less rigid future. It’s why the part of our SCORM Cloud product that gets me most excited is the learning anywhere aspect. And as a data geek, I love that SCORM lets you take learning where learners already are and still get the information you need to see what’s happening without an LMS. So I’m interested to see if the e-learning oracles are right on this one for this year. And excited to see how people use SCORM Cloud to make the jump more comfortable.

Well, put simply, we had a bad day on Wednesday. Frankly, I haven’t heard from anyone that they definitively noticed the downtime we had, but we’ve said all along that we would be direct and clear, and so we shall. <AdmissionOfFailure> On Wednesday, we were doing a bit of housekeeping. Frankly, Test Track users upload a lot of content. Periodically, we take the time via a manual process to seek out orphaned courses and those that haven’t been accessed in any way during the last 6 months. In doing this, we’re able to limit the vast quantities of SCORM content we have to keep up with. Well, when we went to hit "delete" on the old, unaccessed courses, things went badly. We run multiple Amazon Webservice Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances. First, the failure was noticed by a secondary instance which discovered it could no longer access content, and told us through an email. Second, the instances, in automated coordination, attempted to rectify the problem. Third, we discovered that this self-healing process failed, and that the Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volume which houses our content could not be remounted, due to an unexpected file system corruption. An instance going down is no problem… we have more. In fact, this happens occasionally, and is handled without human intervention. The EBS volume going down and becoming unmountable… that’s a problem. Ultimately, this meant that people were unable to access any of the content hosted on SCORM Cloud, including all Test Track content, until we intervened and mounted an older volume… one that was known to function. This was done quickly. Old content and new uploads were available in less than 30 minutes. But here’s the kicker… content uploaded between December 10, 2009 and January 6, 2010 wasn’t available. This incident led us to discover a flaw in our backup scheme that meant recovering that content wasn’t a 10 minute job… In fact, it required recovering from a fatal flaw in the file system we use. The reconstruction/recovery process was kicked off right away, and all content was restored some 11 hours later. So, as of 2am CT on January 7, all content was restored, all users were made whole, and all was well, in a manner of speaking. </AdmissionOfFailure> <PostgameAnalysis> Well, once we addressed the symptom and had everyone up and running again, we thought we should do a bit of analysis. We didn’t like how everything played out, we didn’t like that people were down for varying amounts of time, so we thought we’d go digging. It was time for a little game of 5 Whys. To play 5 Whys, we started by asking, "What happened?" We received notification from a secondary machine of an EC2 Failover Event on the primary (a.k.a. "The Sh*t Hit the Fan") WHY? The primary couldn’t access the EBS volume (where the content is stored). WHY? Something caused the EBS volume’s XFS file system to crash/become corrupt. WHY? The EBS volume’s file system had an inconsistency (that we’ve since found dates back months) and series of aggressive deletes were called in succession from a secondary machine. WHY? This why results in many questions… Why was there a series of aggressive deletes? Did we need to be purging courses? Why was there an inconsistency in the file system dating back several months? Why does XFS have trouble freeing space in certain circumstances? Should we continue to use XFS? Here, though, is a more interesting/actionable string of 5 Whys… Content uploaded between Dec 10 and January 5 was unavailable for 11 hours. WHY? The EBS volume’s file system failed and our backup scheme didn’t allow for immediate or near immediate recovery of recently uploaded files. WHY? Our recovery scheme included reconstructing the drive, rather than simply using a more frequent/recent snapshot. WHY? Because we didn’t consider this eventuality sufficiently. We made a mistake. HOW DO YOU REMEDY THAT MISTAKE? We have already changed our scheme to persist remountable EBS content volumes hourly. This means that we can return to a snapshot that is no more than 1 hour old in a matter of minutes. </PostgameAnalysis> So, in total, we had ourselves a bad day on Wednesday. Did we recover completely? Yes. We’re pleased with that. Did we do so as quickly as we feel we should? We did not. Hopefully none of you were actually impacted. If you were, we’re sorry. If you weren’t, we hope we’ve taken the right steps to make you feel comfortable about our approach to mistakes.

People often ask us to recommend an LMS for them. We shy away from doing so because we don’t want to pick favorites amongst our clients and potential clients. More significantly though, we really don’t know all that much about the functionality and utility of a particular LMS beyond its SCORM interface. "Well then," the inquisitor asks, "who has the best SCORM interface?". Well duh, our SCORM Engine clients of course. "Come on," he presses, "who else is good at this stuff?". One of the first names that comes to mind has always been SumTotal. That judgement is far from a scientific; we don’t go out and technically audit the details of every LMS’s SCORM implementation. Rather, it is an empirical judgement based on how many problems our content customers report with an LMS. More than that, though, it is the experience in working with the vendor if a problem is found. Are they receptive and supporting? Do they have a pragmatic attitude that leads to collaboratively fixing the problem rather that just passing blame? Historically, we’ve rarely had to deal with SumTotal problems. That bodes really well for the quality of their implementation. On the few occasions where we have had occasion to iron out a problem, we’ve had the pleasure of working directly with their lead SCORM developer, Ben Clark. SumTotal is closing its Bellevue development office and sending Ben’s job over to India. When we heard the news, we jumped at the chance to bring him onboard. He accepted and will be starting with us next week! The guys here often joke that I am "one of the top ten SCORM professionals", well in my mind, Ben is a fellow "top-tenner". We’ve worked together on the ADL Technical Working Group for several years and Ben has always impressed me with his insight, knowledge and reason. He’s equally adept at seeing the big picture and navigating the technical weeds. SCORM is at a crossroads now. It needs to evolve and needs to be improved. There will be a lot of work done at ADL, LETSI and others over the next couple years. We plan to be heavily involved, contributing our time, energy and vision to ensure SCORM’s successful evolution. Ben will be joining me in this effort and should enable us to provide a lot more bandwidth to standards development activities. We’re looking forward to great things to come.

SCORM isn’t easy. Everywhere you turn, someone’s having a challenge making it work, whether through human, system or developer error. Which is why we make such a big deal about encouraging people to ask us questions. The best way to get SCORM to work is to ask people who know. It helps you get what you need, it helps us because people stop (hopefully) cursing SCORM, and well, we just like talking with you to see how you’re using SCORM. Most of our questions come in via the contact form on the website. Some come from current customers. Some come up in conversations with prospective customers. We try to bring questions and answers together over in our support forum to provide a resource for everyone struggling with SCORM issues. And since I love video, I’ve started turning some questions into video resources over on our YouTube channel. Short answers to quick questions, most of which I had when I started working here and had no clue about SCORM. (I have one solitary clue now.) Look for more videos from me and our fabulous support dude Joe with answers to your SCORM questions.

Photo credit to ivebeenthere! Yes, I know several of you (and not just my mom) are kind of excited to check out the beta of SCORM Cloud and its new interface. Yes, I know I contributed to that by starting my series of stories… things you’ll be able to do in SCORM Cloud. Yes, I made a mistake. And no, the beta is not quite ready for you guys right now. We want to be sure that when we invite you to come and play that you’ll have a good time. And so we’re going to hold onto the beta for just a little bit longer. (I would guess as to the exact schedule, but I would hate to disappoint you again.) Thanks so much for your patience. I’m really sorry for misleading you, and we’ll see you soon. Tim

Ye Olde Switcharoo, from HogueLikeWoah Do you remember the old phone switchboards? They connected a caller to a receiver, and it required some handholding on the part of the operator, right? As much as we’d like for SCORM to work perfectly every time, and without intervention, that just isn’t reality. Some LMSs are great, but others aren’t. Some LMSs support SCORM 2004, but many don’t. One constant is that connections made by our products have always been strong. And so we’re now offering the ability to create a "Dispatch", or a connection, between a piece of content and any LMS that goes through SCORM Cloud. If you have ever found that your content worked in Test Track, but not in your LMS, now is your chance to fix that problem. Upload the course into SCORM Cloud, download a Dispatch, and put that in your LMS. We’re betting that your problems will be solved. Follow along below for step-by-step instructions, we’ll save the technical details for another day. Creating a Dispatch in SCORM Cloud Step 1: Import a SCORM course First of all, you have to have a package that works in SCORM Cloud. Theoretically, this includes any SCORM or AICC course, but it’s definitely worth importing it and testing it via the Launch button in the SCORM Test Track Sandbox. Once you’ve done that, though, you can move on to creating your Dispatch package. Step 2: Push the "Dispatch" button The button Step 3: Choose or create a Destination We’d like to help keep you organized. Some people will be using Dispatch to protect and track their content by creating Dispatches for their customers (that’s another blog post). If you’re just creating a Dispatch to get around some limitation of your LMS, then you can simply create a single Destination and select it each time. (If you don’t already have a Destination created, you’ll need to bounce over and create it.) The tags and notes sections of this page are completely optional. Skip them your first time through, if you like. When you’re content with your Dispatch, hit create. Step 4: Find your Dispatch OK, we know this step is kind of lame. Rather than taking you to your newly created Dispatch, we’re taking you back to a list of them. (Trust me, we’ll fix this before our final release.) For now, though, pick your recently created Dispatch and click on it. Step 5: Export your Dispatch Now that you’re back on your precious Dispatch screen, you can click the Export button. This is the payoff for all of your work. When you push Export, you’ll be given… wait for it… a SCORM zip file! That’s right… you put your SCORM zip file into the Dispatch box, and out the other end comes… a SCORM zip file! I know, it seems like we aren’t doing much, but there’s a little magic going on behind the scenes. Your new zip file will be smaller, and oh so much better. Step 6: Deliver your well-dressed SCORM package to your LMS The rest of this process will depend largely on your LMS. Take the new package and import it into your LMS just like any other piece of content. Your LMS won’t even know the difference. Here, I’m importing my Dispatch into the old version of Test Track Just like any other course From this point, the experience will vary based on the LMS into which the course is imported. But that’s the beauty of it… it should work in any LMS. (Now, as this is a beta at this point, we’d love to hear your feedback on how well it works. Going out into the wild, as we all know, is a different thing than testing yourself.) Step 7: Report on the course’s usage The real power of Dispatches, other than the fact that they just work, is that you can then report on the usage of your content anywhere. Each LMS will point back to SCORM Cloud to deliver the training, and that means that you can see details about who is using your content and when. Further, you have the ability to disable Dispatches. This means that if someone doesn’t pay, or is mean to your mom, or whatever, you can prevent them from launching that content again. This is a massive change for the SCORM world in which most content is delivered complete with all its assets to the LMS server… This gives you something we all like… control. Enough. I know this article is long. Seriously, I do. So I’m going to stop here. There’s a lot of technical detail behind Dispatch. If you care, let me know that in the comments and we can dig into that detail. For now, though, experiment. Give it a shot.

SCORM Cloud is built to allow learners to learn in whatever application makes the most sense. For some, this is a big corporate LMS. For others, the LMS is just too much. If you’ve got a piece of training that you want to share, how are you going to do it? What’s the easiest way to share something online? The Public URL When I go to share a map with someone, I turn to the "Link" button in Google Maps. I set up my map just how I want it, click the link button, and grab the URL. From there, I can do what I need to with it… I can include it in an email, put it on my blog, whatever… URLs have got to be the simplest sharing mechanism on the web. SCORM Cloud’s Public Invitation Now, you can share any course in your library via a public URL. We call this a public invitation, and creating them is pretty simple. The result, too, is powerful. Consider this your invitation to watch my daughter sing "5 Little Pumpkins" via a public invitation. Step 1 :: Upload a course to SCORM Cloud and click "Invite" Step 2 :: Create a public invitation For now, creating a public invitation requires one email address… If you want to send this to a distribution list, for example, you could certainly do that here. In my case, I’m just sending the URL to myself, because then I can post it anywhere I want… You know, like on Facebook? ‘Cause then everyone could see how cool SCORM is, right? You can actually created a formatted email here, if you like Choose your invitation Here’s the URL itself… send it however you like What happens for the learner? With a public invitation, we want the process to be so simple for the learner. We need something by which to identify them, so we ask for their email address… From there? Straight into the learning material. What happened? For some people, knowing how their learners are doing is fundamental. Well, for you folks, you dig right into all of the details about the invitations and who has accepted them and completed them. For those of you who don’t care to know these things, just avert your eyes. A word of caution Lastly, a word of caution. We’ve given you 10 free registrations (well, for the beta, it’s actually unlimited). That means that if 10 folks accept your invite, you’ll be all out… unless you put in your credit card information. We hope you find the public invitations so useful that you sign up for a paying SCORM Cloud account.

I’m gonna take a quick break from the SCORM Cloud beta tour to lay out a decision we’ve just made. In creating the SCORM Cloud user interface, we confronted something every web developer has been dealing with forever… Which browsers are we going to support? This question is a little different for us than most companies in that we have two distinct audiences: the companies that embed our software and those that use it directly. In supporting companies like we do via SCORM Engine and SCORM Driver, we have an obligation to provide them with the support they need. And let me tell you, many of our clients still support IE5.5 (the bane of a designer’s existence). So, we’ve got a particular responsibility to support the lowest common denominator (or something close to it). It is not our place to drag our customers’ customers forward in the browser evolution… We don’t get to make that decision for them, and so we won’t. This decision applies to the following products: SCORM Engine SCORM Driver Embed-able components of SCORM Cloud, accessed via the API For our embed-able, compatibility based products, we support and will continue to support the following browsers. Firefox 1.0+ Internet Explorer 5.5+ Safari 1.0+ Chrome (we’re still phasing this in, but all appears to be working nicely) Our World For our customers and their customers … we have a certain obligation … . But when it comes to the products we offer directly to the customer, we get to make our own choices. And I don’t feel bad about eliminating a potential customer by virtue of an informed decision if it affects only Rustici Software. In designing and implementing SCORM Cloud’s new UI, we went to our usage metrics. In looking at Google Analytics, we’re seeing that just 7% of our total visitors are using IE6. For us, that number is low enough that we’re willing to ask those users to upgrade if they want to fully experience SCORM Cloud (and its Test Track functionality). Our apologies go out to those of you locked into old browsers by your situation or employer, but we’re going to drop our support of IE5.5 and IE6 for our customer facing products.

We’ve been knee deep in developing enhancements to - heck, creating an almost entirely new - SCORM Cloud, but that doesn’t mean we put other products on hold. In fact, we’ve got big, huge, gargantuan news regarding SCORM Engine, still the player of choice for great e-learning applications. And now, it’s the choice of Odijoo, which is on the verge of releasing with SCORM Engine in place. Not familiar with Odijoo? They’re a free web-based eLearning platform (soon to be SCORM 2004 and 1.2 conformant!) that allows users to have their own personalized online space from which to create, publish, share and monetize online courses. It’s a pretty cool service for people who don’t need their own installed LMS, want an easy way to create a course or look to make money distributing content. Odijoo just launched back in October and quickly discovered a need for people to be able to import previously created content. And … well, since part of the point of using SCORM is to be able to easily play content across systems, SCORM moved up the to-do list to become the next step in Odijoo’s evolution. The big bonus in this scenario for Odijoo is the tolerance we build into our players. Fewer headaches as people begin bringing in content created in a wide variety of tools and for a wide variety of LMSs. Welcome to the Rustici Software family, Odijoo!

Moodle worked for years to achieve SCORM 1.2 conformance and certification. They achieved this laudable goal in October 2009, more than eight years after the standard’s release. A long road and congrats on getting there. Just a few months later, we had Moodle certified for SCORM 2004 by installing the SCORM Cloud Moodle plug-in (which takes about five minutes). We totally understand that SCORM 2004 is irrelevant for a lot of Moodle users. But we also understand that it’s crucial for others. As Moodle partners like Moodlerooms and others attempt to sell their solution to government agencies, they frequently run into the federal government’s requirements around SCORM 2004. As sophisticated content authors look to apply their SCORM 2004 content in Moodle, they are stopped in their tracks. For people and companies looking for next level of SCORM capability, SCORM Cloud lets them push Moodle miles forward … in about five minutes.

When we talk about SCORM Cloud, we usually talk about taking SCORM outside the LMS. Take learning anywhere online. Connect learners to learning. Well, to date, we’ve still been connecting to LMSs with modules for open source learning management systems like Moodle and Sakai. But now we’ve taken that first step away from the LMS with a WordPress plug-in that allows you to offer a SCORM course right from a post or page or sidebar list. We’re still testing it out, writing up instructions and so forth, but by next week (maybe sooner?), we fully expect to have all our ducklings in neat rows and ready to go for full release. To tide you over until then, here’s a look at how I used it on a test blog. Just by pushing a button and picking my course, I was able to add a course directly into a blog post and registered learners can click the button and launch the course right from the post. Now, if you just can’t wait and want to try out the beta version, you can go ahead and download it to check it out. Screencasts to walk you through some of it are on the way available in our YouTube playlist. We’d love to hear what you think about the direction we’ve taken with this.

It seems like we’ve been talking about "SCORM 2.0″ for years now…wait, come to think of it, it has been years. Literally years. But, finally, alas, we have some progress. The industry is moving forward. Hark, do I hear angels singing? While it’s not officially part of "SCORM", LETSI has produced an exceptionally useful enhancement…and guess what, it’s ready and available to be implemented now! The current SCORM communication framework (based on JavaScript) has served us well. It is simple, easy-to-understand, and straight-forward to implement. But, it’s getting a little long in the tooth. Technology has evolved and there are better ways to do things. Enter LETSI’s Run-Time Web-Services (RTWS) project. Over the past year, the RTWS group has worked to create a complete and implementable web services communication protocol that is compatible with SCORM. This project addresses some of the most notable and frustrating limitations of the current SCORM model, including: Enabling "out of browser" experiences, such as training delivered in simulations, games, virtual worlds Facilitating offline or occasionally connected use Removing the cross domain security restriction Enabling deliver on alternative devices, such as mobile phones Allowing for more secure system communication (there are a few other goodies thrown in as well…such has historical attempt tracking) LETSI has published an RTWS Developer’s Guide and there are a number of prototype implementations either already available or in development (from vendors such as Meridian, Booz Allen, OutStart, Boeing…and of course Rustici Software). One of the core tenants of LETSI is that implementation should drive specifications….standards need to be vetted through actual use. To that end, LETSI is actively looking for additional prototype developers and implementers. Let us know if you are interested. As for Rustici Software, we currently have a version of RTWS implemented in a development version of the SCORM Engine. We expect to publish a production quality version with our next SCORM Engine release later this year. At that point, RTWS will be available in SCORM Cloud and it will start to be available in the LMSs of our 100+ SCORM Engine clients as they proceed through their upgrade cycles.

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.

It all started with Albert Haynesworth. Albert Haynesworth, you see, is a NFL defensive tackle, a big man who used to play his football at the University of Tennessee and for the Tennessee Titans. A year ago, he left the Titans via free agency to play for the Washington Redskins. He was given a massive contract, and he had a mediocre year. This year, he came back to camp, and the coach wanted him to prove that he was in shape. He failed. So yesterday, we caught wind of a couple of folks who had tried the challenge themselves. Mike Golic of "Mike & Mike in the Morning" on ESPN tried it… but he’s a former NFL player. Some of the employees at The Virginian-Pilot tried it with varying degrees of success. Frankly, this struck me as just my kind of stupid. And so I brought the stopwatch to work today. And invited all comers to join in the fun. And the smack talk. From one David Ells: And so the fun begins: David Ells, 27 years young: Shuttle 1: 66 seconds, Shuttle 2: 83 seconds. #fail Troy Foster, 34 years: Shuttle 1: 64 seconds, Shuttle 2: 68 seconds. #pass Joe Donnelly, 37 years: Shuttle 1: 75 seconds, Shuttle 2: 77 seconds. #fail, but Joe could keep up this pace forever Mike Rustici, 33 years: Shuttle 1: 70 seconds, Shuttle 2: 73 seconds. #pass. And let me tell you, I have respect for someone who does just the right amount. Tim Martin, 35 years: Shuttle 1: 64 seconds, Shuttle 2: 69 seconds. #pass I came away for the experience with two conclusions. That Ells kid got what he deserved. This is exactly the kind of thing every single workplace needs more of. Truthfully, Rustici Software is pretty good at doing fun stuff. We play disc golf, we have a ping pong table, our office environment is exceptionally casual. But we often fall into the same trap that so many offices do. One day simply can’t be distinguished from another. Today is a day of work that I’ll remember. I’ll remember it because what we did was stupid (no, really, the heat index was over 100… the HR department is not happy.) I’ll remember it because it was different. I’ll remember it because we abused ourselves and each other. Note to self: Do more of this kind of stuff. Give yourself and others a way to mark the days at work… not just wander through them. Work is way too big a part of our lives to plod through day after day.

First!! More than 10,000 plugins available for WordPress and we’re your first, best and only option for using SCORM. Which we should be. This is kind of our spot, after all. All that to point out that SCORM Cloud is officially in the WordPress plugin directory, which makes it just that much easier to install and get going. Just search for SCORM and … well, it’s in a class by itself there. College class, instructional design portfolio, sales training - all easy to execute now. We’ve heard from lots of you who are excited about using this plugin. But we want to hear more about how you’re using it and what other plugins make it more valuable. Do you tie it to BuddyPress? Have you figured out a clever connection to [some related posts]? Making money with a tie to Aweber? I’m compiling a list to be part of our WordPress section to show off your sites and the smart ways you’re putting our plugin to use. If you’ve deployed the SCORM Cloud plugin, let me know and I’ll add you to the list.

We wanted to create something new with SCORM Cloud. Something that could take advantage of the changes happening in learning online. Something that could change the way we think about tapping the internet. Something that anticipated the needs of educators and trainers. And we think we did it. And we aren’t the only ones. In fact, SCORM Cloud was just short-listed for the e.learning age awards in the most innovative new product category. Sweet! SCORM Cloud is just at the beginning of its impact. It’s already making life easier for people with big open-source LMSs, anyone needing to do SCORM testing and those offering training via WordPress. And we’re looking for new ways to stretch all the time. Upcoming innovations? How about using it with Google Apps for domains? That one’s in the works to be available soon and could be a dream for small businesses. And we’re hoping to let you know soon about ways people outside of Rustici are building on top of SCORM Cloud.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said to someone on the phone, "SCORM is difficult, especially for the LMS provider." There are many moving parts, countless interpretations, and vagaries in the specification itself. For the most part, we handle these things exceptionally well. Sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes can compound themselves. The Source of Today’s Problem In SCORM 1.2, mastery_score and lesson_status can interact with each other strangely. Frankly, the specification can be interpreted in two ways. From Section 3.4.4, "The SCORM Run-Time Environment Data Model", in the cmi.core.lesson_status section (henceforth called "The Narrow View"): After setting the cmi.core.lesson_status to "completed", the LMS should now check to see if a Master Score has been specified in the cmi.student_data_mastery_score, if supported, or the manifest that the SCO is a member of. If a Mastery Score is provided and the SCO did set the cmi.core.score.raw, the LMS shall compare the cmi.core.score.raw to the Mastery Score and set the cmi.core.lesson_status to either "passed" or "failed". If no Mastery Score is provided, the LMS will leave the cmi.core.lesson_status as "completed". From Section 3.4.4, "The SCORM Run-Time Environment Data Model", in the cmi.core.lesson_status section, incorporating text before and after "The Narrow View" (henceforth called "The Holistic View"): Additional Behavior Requirements: If a SCO sets the cmi.core.lesson_status then there is no problem. However, the SCORM does not force the SCO to set the cmi.core.lesson_status. There is some additional requirements that must be adhered to successfully handle these cases: Upon initial launch the LMS should set the cmi.core.lesson_status to "not attempted". Upon receiving the LMSFinish() call or the user navigates away, the LMS should set the cmi.core.lesson_status for the SCO to "completed". From above After setting the cmi.core.lesson_status to "completed", the LMS should now check to see if a Master Score has been specified in the cmi.student_data_mastery_score, if supported, or the manifest that the SCO is a member of. If a Mastery Score is provided and the SCO did set the cmi.core.score.raw, the LMS shall compare the cmi.core.score.raw to the Mastery Score and set the cmi.core.lesson_status to either "passed" or "failed". If no Mastery Score is provided, the LMS will leave the cmi.core.lesson_status as "completed". Herein lies the big difference. The bullets are intended only for the cases in which the LMS has been forced to manage the status on its own. In a piece of content that sets its status (as we’ll discuss below), we believe the LMS is not supposed to intervene with regard to the Mastery Score. What we did wrong, a while ago In SCORM Engine 2007.1, we went with this logic, which maps to the "Narrow View": If cmi.core.lesson_status has been set and cmi.core.score.raw has been set, compare the Mastery Score to the cmi.core.score.raw and set the status to "passed" or "failed". Ultimately, as this logic rolls up through the course, this tolerates content we believe is wrong and reads as "completion_status=complete and success_status=passed" or "completion_status=complete and success_status=failed" to the client LMS. Put another way, it cleans up the mistaken interpretations made by the content author. (It’s an understandable mistake.) This seems OK at first blush, but then you start running into content that expects the other behavior. If you’re a content author, one that reads the spec holistically, and you’ve intentionally set a value for lesson_status, and the LMS overrides it, that’s pretty confusing. If the spec were totally clear on the subject, we would stand behind it. Given that the spec is ambiguous here, we can appreciate the author’s point of view. So, we did what we do. We made accommodations. How we accommodate different interpretations of the specification We have long believed that the best way to have a highly compatible SCORM player is to accommodate different interpretations from content. This is a perfect example of why we do this, and it allows us to properly support content in a way that other LMSs and players just don’t. From our release notes for 2008.1: Mastery Score Overrides Lesson Status - In SCORM 1.2, there is a debate about when and if the LMS should override the lesson status reported by the SCO with a status determined by the reported score’s relation to the mastery score (i.e. if the reported score is 60 and the mastery score is 80, then should the LMS set the status to failed even though the SCO said the status should be passed?). This setting allows you to choose whether or not the LMS should override the status based on the score for this course. Alright, this is great, right? Now we can have our cake and eat it too. (The fact that cake is gross will have to be another post.) Every time we add a new package property like this one, we have to make a decision on the part of our clients. We have to decide what the default is. In some cases, this is easy stuff. When we’re tolerating departures from the standard, we simply go with the standard as the default. This is a tough one, though, because the spec is a bit ambiguous. In this situation, we go with what we believe is the correct interpretation of the standard. In this case, we decided to opt for "false", or, mastery score does not override status. We think that a content developer who’s smart enough to set his or her own status is also smart enough to retrieve the mastery score and compare against if they want to. We’re erring on the holistic side of things here, and I still feel good about this decision. I do not, however, feel good about our mistake. The Mistake We chose the default. We deployed the new version of the SCORM Engine. And we added the necessary columns as part of the upgrade script. In doing so, we used the default value. Big Mistake. Big. Huge. -Vivian, Pretty Woman (Note, this is not a wide spread problem. It’s isolated to content with an atypical interpretation, but it is very problematic for those courses. I just like to quote movies.) Some of our clients have content that expected the LMS to make the comparison against the Mastery Score even though they’d already set the status themselves. This content had functioned without issue for some time. And in upgrading to 2008.1, they introduced a problem with older content. With the new default, though, this is what happens. A course could set cmi.core.lesson_status to "completed" and then report a cmi.core.score.raw that exceeds the Mastery Score they’ve provided. The content could assume that the LMS logic defined in Section 3.4.4 (the narrow view) would then change the lesson_status to "passed". Because we’ve opted to go with the holistic approach by default, the status would in fact not be changed. This scenario, though, isn’t a big deal. The client LMS would still interpret this course as sufficiently completed and all would be well. The mistake manifests itself, though, when the cmi.core.score.raw is less than the Mastery Score. In this situation, the status values would remain "completion_status=complete and success_status=unknown". To the client LMS, this appears to be a course that is probably complete and has no testing, when in fact, it’s really a failed test. The conclusion? We have picked the right defaults for people going forward, but we probably should have set the defaults in the upgrade script to stick to the old behavior. (We have, in fact, gone back to the 2008.1 upgrade script and made this change for those of you who have yet to upgrade.) Now What? Well, we just, last night, discovered this side effect behavior, and it obviously merits immediate action for some clients. For those of you who ran against 2007.1 and have some concern that you may have courses that function like this, you can opt to revert to the old logic. If you’d like help doing just that, you can simply ask us for the queries to revert to that default. We’ll help you through that and we’ll help you examine any potential "false completions" that have happened since you deployed 2008.1. If you’re building a new SCORM Engine integration, you can opt to go with our defaults. It is our experience that more content (including some from a big authoring tool vendor) benefits from our new default behavior. But that doesn’t mean it catches every scenario. This is something that you and we will continue to be on the lookout for. In fact, we’re going to see if there’s any sort of a heuristic that we could deploy successfully to handle this ourselves. (We’re not optimistic, but we’d like to catch this one without human intervention.)

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.

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.

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.

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.