Many of us have a goal to provide more interactive andengaging learning experiences that may involve use of remote learning content.And today, we may also have a requirement to use an LMS and/or SCORM. If youwant to use a new technology like remote-hosted HTML5 and xAPI to get moreuseful learning analytics data to prove training effectiveness, you may thinkthe requirement for LMS or LMS/SCORM makes the effort a non-starter. Not allLMSs are friendly to the variety of learning event types that can happenoutside of the LMS. As we are moving more and more into asynchronous learningmodels, the concept of remotely viewing and tracking learning events whileusing the LMS to build and manage curriculums is a real-world requirement.
cmi5: What isit, and does it support remote content?
cmi5 is a brilliantly devised profile for using the Experience API (xAPI) specification with traditional learning management systems (LMSs).cmi5 is designed to be a bridge between SCORM and xAPI. The cmi5 profile willwork with remote content out of the box, but it requires your LMS to supportit. On the instructional design side, implementing cmi5 is relatively trivialif you can already send xAPI statements. However, on the LMS side, LMSproviders need to do some minor software development to support cmi5. I wouldcertainly recommend that you ask your LMS provider about it. There is atremendous amount of legacy SCORM content out there on LMSs, and the cmi5profile is intended to get it reporting xAPI.
This article discusses a SCORM technique, but I shouldalso note that if your LMS provides an application programmer interface (API),you might be able to report the LMS information needed, such as completions andscores, directly to the LMS. APIs allow software to play nice with othersoftware in the enterprise sandbox. Using APIs is an extremely common andeveryday practice; in fact, this is the way all enterprise software is expectedto work. It would be great if all LMSs would at least provide APIs for trackinglearning events outside the LMS, but in my experience that does not seem to bethe case. Whether you are using SCORM/AICC, or even if you find that your LMSprovides APIs, it is an important and simple first step to set up a testpackage and identify the best path. All you really need to do is pass a singlestatement to the LMS and the door is open for more.
It is possible to get remote HTML5 content, enabled withxAPI (which provides all manner of learner data), to work with your currentLMS. (Instructional designers don’t have to completely know how to do thetechnical parts of this. This article includes a “techie section” for you toshare with a developer.) What is important is to know that “It can’t be done”is a totally unacceptable conclusion when you want to get into new learningtechnology and use your LMS. It is beingdone, and you can begin new training goals and initiatives today.
For example, we recently completed two projects that usexAPI to populate the entire learning experience. xAPI interactions can informlearners of their progress as well as track all the learners in aggregate. Inmy last article, a working case study (“Gamification, Social Collaboration, xAPI Technologies, and Sales-Training Success,” published November 30, 2016),xAPI was used to show training points, social points, progress in the training,and leaderboards. All that data came from the LRS and informed the learners ofexactly where they were in training and competency. What if you need to useyour LMS to deliver that type of experience? What if you want to provide atraining experience that uses disparate training technologies and sources oftraining content? Examples of xAPI populating and driving the learningexperience are starting to emerge.
The basic concept described in the following “techiesection” is that a SCORM package is installed on the LMS, and when a userlaunches it, the user is able to “remote view” and interact with the remotelyhosted HTML5 course. TheLRS is able to provide information to the learner and track all interactions,activities, and training results data. The LRS data can serve multipleaudiences. This happens in the same way that consumer behavior data feedsmultiple internal audiences to help improve products and businesses such asAmazon, Visa, and Facebook. xAPI interaction data can inform improvement oftraining effectiveness and begin to inform rules to adapt training to theindividual.
The “techiesection”
Developers could use this method to transmit other SCORMdata if needed. What I have provided here is a simple example (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Using SCORM to get remote HTML5 courseware, enabled withxAPI, to work with an LMS
Description of the diagram:
- Create remotely hosted HTML thatcan generate a completion code. (I can provide a generic version of this codeupon request.) In one case, the course has a completion certificate page thatis locked till complete—once it is complete, a completion code is generated andsent to the iFrame in the SCORM package.
- Provide access to the HTML from the LMS with some kind of authenticationstrategy. Chances are there are multiple options for authentication being usedin your enterprise right now. One such authentication might be handled througha single sign-on process from an LMS by generating a unique hash from the user’sname and a shared secret key; then, in your authentication service, youcalculate the hash again and make sure it matches. Remember to startwith a test package that provides a single statement and build from there.
- Create a SCORM Package .zip filethat uses an iFrame that has a script, which generates a SCORM completion code.(I can also provide a generic version of this code upon request.) Load it ontothe LMS and distribute it according to the LMS rules. When the user clicks onthe course, they will authenticate and the remote hosted content will bedelivered.
When the course completion message is received, the pop-upturns it into a SCORM completion message and communicates that back to the LMS.
Conclusion
I hope that this article helpsto inform a discussion, based on a working enterprise client case, that mighthelp you and your team discover an acceptable and secure work-around to useyour LMS and new learning techniques. This type of work-around implementation requires a small amount of webdeveloper labor that is incidental to the design and development of the totallearning experience.
