This is something we run into fairly often. We are developing a SCORM or AICC compliant course either custom or using an authoring tool . And we run into the same tough situation each time: If there's an integration issue, like the score or completion is not getting set appropriately, we want to be able to make changes to the course to try to fix it.... The client has not set up a version of the LMS just for this purpose. This happens both to external and internal developers. Likely this sounds familiar to many of you. The question is what to do about it.

There have been lots of good comments and discussion on the post Test SCORM Courses with an LMS : eLearning Technology . Well worth looking at some of them. The basic issue covered in the post was how to test SCORM courses prior to loading on a given LMS (e.g., Docent, SumTotal, Saba, Learn.com, etc.).

SCORM warning 02:06:57 pm, by Mark 1941 views Categories: Technology , Designing Online Courses , Content Management Often a potential client will specify that they want their elearning to be "SCORM

Some of them I just respond with an email. But, I'm going to try to make a practice of creating blog posts around some of the questions. Here's a recent one to get me started: Is it mandatory to use SCORM while developing an E-learning Software? SCORM is as close as you get to Mandatory in the world of eLearning. You want to implement your courseware to the SCORM standard if you plan to have it launched and/or tracked under an LMS.

So my friend Mark Friedman, down at JKDDC , posed the following question to his LinkedIn network: "What do you think the SCORM E-Learning Reference Model will evolve into during the next 10 years? SCORM is literally 10 years old now - so guessing what it can evolve into (or not) in the next 10 years seems to be good question to ponder these days." I just wanted to post a couple excerpts from the answers that Mark has received so far.

I recently posted about the SCORM 2.0 Call for Papers and how I feel this is a very important moment for SCORM and that I think it would be great if the papers came back with big,hairy audacious goals that really sought to move the industry forward and so forth. As if so often the case, I am merely following what Tom King has also already thought about: "I think this is important, as we could be at the cusp of a make-or-break situation for evolution ( or revolution ) of learning and training infrastructure... ???read-write???

So I spent most of last week at the LETSI / SCORM 2.0 Workshop in Pensacola, FL. I used CoverItLive to do a running set of notes of the workshop and that's available here . I don't want to go over all the stuff in my notes but I did want to be sure and point out that the workshop developed and is currently refining about 30 use cases for SCORM 2.0 .

One good question to asked by one of my developers during our weekly meeting. Should we support SCORM for a new e-learning 2.0 platform? For me, SCORM and e-learning 2.0 totally different world. SCORM , centralized, institution centered and IP ownership vs. e-learning 2.0 , on the other hand decentralized, learner-centered. See the picture?

This line of thinking leads me to these questions: How would you design your perfect LMS? What features would you include (or exclude)? How would it differ from current LMS products on the market? I’ll start this off, but I really would love to hear your thoughts. Who knows, maybe (if we’re lucky) some LMS vendors are listening! My perfect LMS would… Support the AICC, SCORM 1.2, and SCORM 2004 specifications 100% accurately . I don’t want to deal with the "Oh….we chose not to implement that particular part of the spec.

Relevant to the recent discussions around Do You WANT an LMS? Does a Learner WANT an LMS? and the possibility that we could soon be seeing something that looks more like a Wiki+Tracking capability, I just saw the news: Vignette Provides Online, On-Demand Training For Customers . They've added tracking and SCORM to their CMS solution.