I’m about to publish a series of tutorials demonstrating how to build SCORM courses by hand.
Some may ask: Why hand-coded, and why SCORM?
Let’s address the SCORM question first.
There are a dozen reasons why e-learning developers and instructional designers might scoff at SCORM: It’s outdated (replaced by CMI5 and xAPI); it reinforces the much-maligned “page-turner” approach and related instructional pedagogies; it forces learners and instructional designers to stay within the confines of the learning management system (a.k.a. the “walled garden”); it’s not secure; it requires the learner to use a web browser instead of engaging with the real world; yadda yadda yadda.
Those arguments certainly have merit. However, there’s no denying SCORM is deeply entrenched in the enterprise LMS world, and SCORM continues to be the primary format for corporate training courses. There’s a reason products like Articulate Rise and Adobe Captivate continue to generate millions of dollars in annual revenue.
As for why hand-coded, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of developers who need to understand how to build a simple SCORM course without being locked into a vendor’s ecosystem. Not everyone wants to use a rapid e-learning development app, and I’m often asked for help by small teams trying to build SCORM courses with modern development stacks such as React and Vue.
These tutorials are for them.
The tutorials will be structured linearly, with a goal of being less like a reference manual and more conversational in nature. The series will be an organic walk-through of concepts and exercises, progressing from simplistic to increasingly sophisticated. Key concepts are introduced within the context of exercises; each exercise builds upon the previous exercise, often reusing code snippets, so it’s a good idea to start with the first tutorial and work your way through each section.
By the end, you should be armed with the knowledge and tools you need to insert basic SCORM support into just about any HTML project.