A SIMPLE GUIDE TO CREATING SCORM COURSES

Objectives  Overview of SCORM  Requirements of SCORM courses  Use cases for SCORM courses  Technical aspects of SCORM courses  Creating a SCORM course using Articulate Presenter or Articulate Storyline  Creating a SCORM course using Captivate  Load your SCORM course to the LMS  SCORM reports

Overview of SCORM  What is SCORM?  SCORM is a set of technical standards for e-learning software products. SCORM tells programmers how to write their code so that it can “play well” with other e-learning software. It is the de facto industry standard for e-learning interoperability. Specifically, SCORM governs how online learning content and Learning Management Systems (LMSs) communicate with each other.  What does SCORM stand for?  SCORM stands for “Sharable Content Object Reference Model”.  “Sharable Content Object” indicates that SCORM is all about creating units of online training material that can be shared across systems. SCORM defines how to create “sharable content objects” or “SCOs” that can be reused in different systems and contexts.  “Reference Model” reflects the fact that SCORM isn’t actually a standard. ADL didn’t write SCORM from the ground up. Instead, they noticed that the industry already had many standards that solved part of the problem. SCORM simply references these existing standards and tells developers how to properly use them together.  SCORM course changes the course status to complete or pass.

Requirements of SCORM courses  Course opens in another window  Popup blockers must be turned off The browser Google and Yahoo Toolbars have popup blockers that also must be turned off  Internet connection must be maintained during the completion of the course  There is a 30 minute time out for the LMS. The course must send messages to the LMS to maintain connection greater than that 30 minutes.  Video play puts the course inactive while playing

Use cases for SCORM courses  You have a test built into the course content and don’t want to have a test in the LMS  Quiz completes the course - You want to report on the questions or obtain a valid score  Single scored button – Either no quiz or forced 100% correct  You just want them to look at some slides to get credit  Slide views completes the course – Information only  Epic-built courses you want the user to view but not take a test on  Single scored button  Slide views completes the course  Presented material has two branches depending on audience – Providers vs Nurses  Single scored button – Either no quiz or forced 100% correct  Quiz completes the course - You want to report on the questions or obtain a valid score If the questions are not the same for each branch, a lower percent must be entered to pass  Test Out Simulation for EPIC Access  Quiz completes the course - You want to report on the interactions and obtain a valid score

Technical aspects of SCORM courses  Report each slide view real time vs all at the end  Slide views real time allows bookmarking  If you have a quiz, it may or may not keep track of the scored questions. I send those at the end. One way around it is to ensure the questions are forced to be correct to move on. Then skipping doesn’t matter.  Send resume data or not – Always start from the beginning or not  If they start over, you can send all data at the end.  Set to Normal After Pass sets the completion status and allows the user to take it again

How do you create SCORM content?  Use an Authoring Tool, such as:  Adobe Captivate  Articulate Presenter with Quizmaker  Articulate Storyline  TechSmith Camtasia  … (what else do people use out there?)

Creating a SCORM Course using Articulate Presenter (or Storyline)  Articulate Presenter: PowerPoint based tool  Adds menu to existing PowerPoint application and has it’s own ribbon:

Articulate Presenter and Storyline

Creating a SCORM course using Captivate 7

 Set up course information

Creating a SCORM course using Captivate 7  Set Advanced settings

LOAD YOUR COURSE TO THE LMS See for a demonstration of SCORM content loadinghttps://

Steps for loading to our LMS 1. Find the SCORM files published by your Authoring Tool (or sent to you) 2. Make sure they are not in a.zip file. If in a.zip file, extract them 3. Upload these files to your courses.chexweb.com FTP site (or your content hosting site) 4. Make a note of where these were saved on the content server (the URL)

Steps for loading to our LMS 5. Log in to the LMS as an administrator 6. Go to: Content Uploading Management > Content Loading > SCORM 7. Click Browse 8. Navigate to the folder where your course is published 9. Find and select the file titled imsmanifest.xml 10. Click Submit

Steps for loading to our LMS 11. Select the checkbox next to the name and click Submit 12. You will be prompted for the Content URL Prefix: 13. Erase the default content in this text box. Replace it with the location (URL) of the web folder that holds your course content. E.g.: course 14. Leave the other settings as is and click Submit

Steps for loading to our LMS 15. If you are prompted for a Course XID, this is because the LMS determined the Course XID was already in use: Select the checkbox under Select, type in a new (slightly different) Course XID and click Reload. 16. From here you can Preview the course to make sure it worked, and/or you can Edit the course to add it to a Content Group and make other modifications. Thanks to Jared Holmberg’s excellent instructions, Importing a SCORM course into the CHEX Learning Management System (2006). The steps here are based on more details steps from this document.Importing a SCORM course into the CHEX Learning Management System

TEST YOUR COURSE

Test your SCORM content  Switch to user view and/or log in as a test user  Find the course  Launch the course  Do what is needed to meet the passing criteria (pass the quiz, watch the required content)  Close the module  Check to see if completion status updated correctly  Check to see that it came off of your To Do List

TROUBLESHOOT YOUR COURSE

Common Errors  Page Not Found Error: Make sure you gave the LMS the correct location of your files, e.g. gthecourse You can find this in the Course Map section. gthecourse  Course is scoring incorrectly Make sure you set up the Tracking parameters correctly in your authoring tool. Tip, before repeating the entire process of loading a a new SCORM course, first try just replacing the files on the content server with corrected versions. Most of the time this works.

SCORM reports  CORM_-_Detail Report.pdf CORM_-_Detail Report.pdf

Best Practices  Make sure to clearly state to your users what is considered completion of the course.  Tell people on last slide/page something like this: “You may now close the window and your course progress will be updated.”

SCORM Cloud  Use the SCORM Cloud to test your course outside of the CHA LMS:  Testing a course on here is free. If it works on the SCORM Cloud, but won’t work on our LMS, then it suggests something is wrong with our LMS.  However, if it doesn’t work on SCORM Cloud, then something is likely wrong with your course files.

Again… Pop-up Blockers Must be Disabled  Disabling one is often not enough  Make sure users have ALL pop-up blockers off  Internet Explorer has a built in pop-up blocker  The Google Toolbar has it’s own pop-up blocker  Yahoo Toolbar, yep, another pop-up blocker

SCORM 1.2 vs 2004  Just use SCORM 1.2  There are more features in 2004, but you aren’t going to be able to take advantage of them in our current LMS anyway, so it is better to stick with the simpler, more reliable version of the standard.