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Standards-friendy eLearning and Web development (HTML 5 version)

Posts tagged ‘learning management systems’

Customizing SCORM Manifests in Captivate and Articulate Presenter

Someone recently asked me if it was possible to customize Captivate’s SCORM template to reduce the need for manual editing after publishing. In her case, the manifest needed to be edited to include SumTotal TotalLMS’s custom SCORM extensions. The answer is yes. Here’s how.

Not so crazy about Moodle? Try Chamilo

Tired of Moodle? Former Dokeos developers have forked Dokeos’ open-source code and used it to create a new LMS named Chamilo. It’s basically Dokeos under-the-hood, but with newer features and a new direction.

SCORM security (two kinds of SCORM people)

I’ve had a flurry of emails and messages regarding my SCORM cheat the past few days, and have received feedback from a number of well-regarded SCORM aficionados, some of whom contributed to the standard and helped make SCORM what it is today. This is wonderful, I’m very happy to hear from everyone, especially regarding such an engaging topic.

But as I hear more from these seasoned SCORM pros, I’ve made (what I believe to be) an interesting observation: there is a sharp division between die-hard SCORM developers and casual users. I suppose I’ve felt this way for a long time, but it’s really coming into focus this week. Let me try to define the camps.

Target settles accessibility lawsuit for $6 million

Eventually someone in the e-learning field is going to get slapped with a lawsuit just like Target did. If that’s what it takes to wake people up, I’m hoping it’s sooner rather than later!

Does SCORM need a little brother?

SCO stands for shareable content object. If a course is not built to be shareable, it isn’t really a SCO, even if it uses SCORM for packaging. Spinning SCORM’s communication element off into its own standard — without the name SCORM — would free SCORM to truly be a Shareable Content Object Reference Model, and would free non-aggregators from having to deal with the complexities of SCORM.

Choosing a specific technology for your e-learning courseware

This question came in via email. I figured I would post it (keeping the author anonymous) because these are very common questions, and maybe this post can help other people out. I also want to give others the opportunity to throw in their 2 cents! :)

What do you want *your* SCORM to do?

Most e-learning developers don’t care about SCORM and only (begrudingly) learn enough to get the job done. I don’t blame them. This brings up the never-ending question when it comes to using SCORM in courseware: What are you really trying to do with SCORM?

Bollyboard?

Funny stuff.

The Adventures of Bollywood Blackboardwala
Here’s a small series of humorous episodes related to recent Blackboard and Open Source Learning Management Systems.
The mashups are made with snippets of classic Hindi Bollywood films, overlaid with user created subtitles, from a fun online tool called BombayTV from Grapheine.
The role of Blackboardwala is played by [...]

cmi.core.exit & cmi.exit

Ok, I just had to write a quick blurb about this one: in about 3.5 years of using SCORM in my own course code, I had never used cmi.core.exit (SCORM 1.2) or cmi.exit (SCORM 2004). Seems incredibly daft of me now that I’ve taken a few minutes to review the documentation.

Blackboard: Spoke too soon?

Alfred Essa posted this tidbit today:
An Important Correction to the Blackboard Patent Story
A number of us, including this blog, have gotten this story wrong. It’s time for a correction.
The USPTO has NOT invalidated the Blackboard patent. Instead the USPTO is proposing to invalidate the patent and has issued some preliminary documents for review and comment. [...]