SCORM Unplugged
Cheryl Cohen
The MedBiquitous Laboratory
Johns Hopkins University
If you are developing an e-learning strategy for your organization, you won't get very far in your analysis without running into the acronym SCORM. You may first encounter SCORM when you are evaluating authoring tools, the software for creating e-learning content. The proponents of many authoring tools like the popular Macromedia Authorware boast that they allow you to create learning content that can be used on any Learning Management System (LMS) that conforms with SCORM. Similarly, many a software company that develops LMSs will let you know that their product supports content from a variety of SCORM-conformant authoring tools because their product's architecture supports the major learning standards including SCORM. You may also see SCORM referred to in publications for instructional designers, e-learning developers, and educators. Among technical people involved in e-learning development, discussions of SCORM are unavoidable.
What is SCORM?
Developed by the US Department of Defense's Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL), SCORM is acknowledged as the model for online education. SCORM is a suite of standards for online education that enables interoperability of learning content with multiple LMSs. SCORM implements a modular approach to online learning that aggregates discrete units of digital instruction.
SCORM has gone far beyond use in the military, however, and has been adopted widely throughout the world in business and in education. Because MedBiquitous has customized SCORM to meet the special requirements of healthcare e-learning, SCORM for Healthcare is being adopted as a model for healthcare.
SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model. Sharable Content Objects (known affectionately as SCOs) are small, reusable, building blocks of instruction. They are the interchangeable parts that people creating instruction can put together in different ways to create a lesson, a course, or even a curriculum. A SCO can be as small as an image, text, or audio used to support e-learning, a block of information such as a procedure or a concept, or a meaningful assembly of smaller objects like a lesson, a unit, or a course.
Now on to Reference Models, which are collections of components from existing specifications or standards. SCORM brings together components developed by the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee and the IMS Global Learning Consortium to describe how to define, package, and manage SCOs.
The Four Pillars of SCORM
SCORM development has been centered on four basic requirements for SCOs: durability, interoperability, accessibility, and reusability (a.k.a., the ITIES).
Durability ensures the learning systems of the future will be compatible with the SCOs of today. Because of SCORM, content developers will not have to modify learning content when software or hardware systems change. And, the future developers of the LMSs or other learning environments will be obliged to create platforms that conform to SCORM.
Interoperability makes sure that content developed for one SCORM-conformant LMS can be delivered on another LMS. Organizations do not have to stay with the same brand of LMS forever. In addition, content created by one organization can be shared with another organization that has a different LMS.
Accessibility allows content developers to create and manage content in a way that allows other content developers and learners to discover appropriate content. The SCOs are associated with rich and standardized descriptions of the content. These descriptions are a form of metadata known as Learning Object Metadata (LOM). Just as a label on a container provides information on what's inside, learning object metadata provides information on a learning module, including the title, author, description, keywords, educational objective, and other relevant information. This information helps learners and content developers to find just the right piece of instruction. Learners can use the learning object as a mini-course, and content developers can include the learning object in a new course.
Reusability allows content developers to create content that can be used in other learning contexts. For example, a SCO written for medical students that provides instruction on how to read an echocardiogram could be used in a range of courses intended for a variety of learners.
How SCORM Works
SCORM explains how authors should create conformant SCOs (the SCORM Content Aggregation Model) and how that content should behave in an LMS (the SCORM Run-Time Environment). In addition, SCORM describes how the developer can specify how content should be sequenced (how it flows and branches) in response to learner- or system-initiated events and how LMSs should interpret these rules.
Creating Conformant Content (SCORM Content Aggregation Model)
The process of creating online learning experiences involves bringing together a number of different electronic assets such as text, images, sound, streaming video, and applications in a cohesive and instructionally meaningful way. The SCORM Content Aggregation Model describes how these assets should be created, described, and packaged.
To create a SCO, content developers bring together the appropriate electronic assets. Developers must also describe each asset, SCO, and course by creating metadata files. These XML files contain structured information that describes such attributes as file type, title, and classification. An LMS will then access the XML files to learn about the content.
To create a course, a developer must organize the SCOs. Since SCOs cannot contain any links to other SCOs to maintain independence and reusability, the sequencing and navigation information must exist outside of the SCO. To do this, the developer creates a packaging manifest, a file that contains sequencing and navigation information . The packaging manifest contains a table of contents, which, when displayed in the LMS, allows a learner to navigate through the course.
Making your Content Happen (the SCORM Run-Time Environment)
The SCORM Run-Time Environment (RTE) determines how content should work when it is displayed in a SCORM-conformant LMS. To do this, each SCO must communicate with the LMS via a series of commands that an LMS can interpret. In addition, the RTE tracks data about the learner and his/her progress through a course.
Why SCORM for Healthcare?
As described earlier, SCORM is a suite of standards that makes it easier to find relevant learning content and easier to reuse that content on different systems and in different learning contexts. A standard developed by the IEEE, Learning Object Metadata (LOM) is one part of the SCORM suite of standards. LOM provides a standard for encoding general information about learning objects, including title, author, date, and educational objective among many other things. Healthcare LOM customizes the LOM standard used by SCORM, adding elements specific to healthcare education, including credit information, off label use disclosure, conflict of interest disclosure, and level of evidence. Healthcare LOM also customizes the vocabularies for some of the generic metadata elements, including classification and educational context.
How are SCORM and Healthcare LOM Used?
Many healthcare educators provide self-paced online instruction for individual learners, clinicians, and patients. Content developers can develop this online instruction so that it is conformant to both SCORM and Healthcare LOM. The content is developed as a set of self-contained learning (SCOs). The SCOs may be organized to form an online course. Each SCO and course has corresponding metadata that describes it. Healthcare LOM is used to encode the metadata for healthcare content.
SCORM-conformant online instruction is typically delivered to users via an LMS. To facilitate search and discovery of learning content across multiple organizations, learning repositories or registries may collect Healthcare LOM documents, allowing users to search broad collections for learning objects that meet their needs.
Implementation Requirements
To develop SCORM for Healthcare-conformant learning content, you will need a conformant development tool or a web programmer who can create the necessary XML files and add javascript programming calls to the learning content. Learning content can be created using web development and education authoring tools like Dreamweaver, Flash, and Authorware, or it can be created using a Learning Content Management System, such as Outstart Evolution.
You will also need a SCORM-conformant LMS that can deliver SCOs and conformant courses to learners and track their progress.
