SCORM security (two kinds of SCORM people)

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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.

Cheating in SCORM

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I’m always surprised how little people talk about cheating in e-learning; maybe it’s a fear of revealing just how easy it can be. The fact is, SCORM — the most common communication standard in e-learning — is fairly easy to hack. I’ve whipped up a proof-of-concept bookmarklet that when clicked will set your SCORM course to complete with a score of 100 (works with both SCORM 1.2 and 2004).

Does SCORM need a little brother?

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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.