SCORM 2.0: White Paper Topics I’m interested in collaborating on">SCORM 2.0: White Paper Topics I’m interested in collaborating on
Aside from rocking out, quoting movies and tv shows incessently, cooking, troubleshooting a wide array of technical issues… one of the things I do really well is start things I’m excited about. I’m getting better at finishing them.
There are at least two ideas I’ve had brewing that I’d like to write a white paper on, but I probably won’t have the gumption in me to finish both of them by myself by August 15. I’m posting them here in the hopes that you or someone you know might be interested in collaborating on a white paper topic through helping edit, research, add some other ideas and/or even to help write.
I think there are many people who feel a little nervous about the idea of writing a whole paper on their own. I’d feel a lot more comfortable myself if someone else thought I had a decent idea before I submitted it.
So if you’re interested in either of these ideas, let me know. I’m going to really try to draft up a brain dump on these topics by the beginning of next week, and we can take a stab at collaborating through Google Docs or the web 1.0 way of emailing Word Docs as an attachment.
My interests…
* Exposing a content authoring feature as a service to support subject matter experts and user-generated content, resulting in XML with media attachments packaged that can be “skinned” according to LMS-administered settings for organizational presentation rules.
* [DITA has a schema proposed for Learning and Training content](http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tchome.php?wgabbrev=dita-learningspec).
* Having E-Learning content that validates to the same schema helps with interoperability.
* A standardized content authoring platform allows user-generated content to conform to organizational norms.
* Separating out the “content” from the “presentation layer” allows organizations to control the presentation of interoperable content.
* A market for LMS or service vendors opens up to compete on the strenth of the user-experience in authoring such content.
* Services are already proposed to package content for SCORM “[from the cloud](http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Get_Involved_with_Transcoder).”
* Expose a service for tagging content (a la del.icio.us) and elevating the relevance of content (a la Digg/Pligg) to engage a community of learners to both assist in the metadata collection on content.
* Metadata is still important, even if the implementation has been crap to this point.
* Elevating the relevance of specific content over others in a repository helps with connecting to talent management systems, automated intelligent tutoring agents, etc.
* [Martin Ebner](http://elearningblog.tugraz.at/) helped spark this specific idea and has agreed to help, but there’s room for a couple more collaborators if there’s interest on this topic.
Aaron -
I’m actually keenly interested in #1 above. Having served the military courseware development machine (various customers) for a decade or so, I recognized that content reuse has been rare and maintenance and deployment have been the biggest gotchas in the investment equation.
I’ve been a proponent of tool support and development, standardized pattern definitions, as well as standards based transport / transformation. DITA, S1000D, and similar standards that employ common source data ‘pools’ are the secret to minimizing redundancy. There are a lot of issues associated with a successful implementation (I lean towards simple and now vice sophisticated enough for the future.)
One of the other areas I think is lacking in this area is the transport of design data. I see no reason that a fields based standard design definition couldn’t be established. This would REALLY help folks share things that ARE absolutely reusable and might result in a higher rate of reuse.
I’ve worked with a lot of vendors, both when I was with the government and more recently as partners, that have use deployment methods that essentially create ‘content cartridges’.
So picture a standard runtime packaging that consumes a cartridge / organization specification to run a course. Think common source pooling and we can start to access bits of a cartridge (like DITA) from within a package. Cool enough – but move that backwards to a design standard (prior to final transformation) that can be handed off between centers, between organizations, and becomes a (potentially unused) part of the content package. So to see the design specifications, edit the design, etc.. it’s suddenly really easy if it’s contained in the content package. In the case of service driven assemblies, mash-ups, etc.. these specs could be functions of reports. Now to move a design from one authoring system to another, conceptually it shouldn’t matter what the original source for the design was.
Steve
I think you just wrote what I was thinking in a much more technical way (you HAVE worked with DoD before!).
I would love to work with you on this idea. The one thing I want to be cautious of is the idea of a “cartridge” metaphor. As you may know, IMS has a specification brewing for Common Cartridge, and IMS and SCORM… not such good bedfellows. Save that, however, and the idea of a runtime design layer is pretty much what I was thinking. You open up a market for people to build the custom skins for organizations that run the same datafeed to fulfill the content.
Yeah – I can see your point about clashing with pre-existing standard monikers. The cartridge idea does resonate with most of the customers I’ve talked to. The concept of a standardized abstraction provides efficiencies that folks recognize (and a lot of developers are already using).
Now, you talked above about common source pooling. Are you referring to within the “package” or a shared pool for things like GUI that are available to any content in the system?
I was thinking more leveraging the design layer abstraction, but I see little reason why a system couldn’t be granular enough to break the package barrier. As well as shared level elements for employment across the system. It just makes sense for things like template elements to be reuseable across within the organization.
Behavior template + Behavior template + Behavior template… = Functional assembly
content is consumed by the org behavior templates -
Better model for newer organizations, I can see this being pretty efficient.
This seems very interesting. I work for a studio that builds and distributes trainings.
As Scorm2.0 is under development, we are currently thinking about how we can adopt it. One of my ideas should to build a web service like basecamp for teams that create courses.
Your reflexion seems to go in the same way and I’m interested to share opinions with you as my reflexion advances (for now it’s not the case, but I’ve looked about DITA which seems promising.
Nautile
Steve,
I’ll draft up what I’m thinking and, if you’re open to it, send it on to you to pile on and/or edit. I think we’re talking about the same idea, but the limits of commenting here may be too restrictive. I’ll email you my skype and IM information — maybe we can share some notes.
Nautilebleu,
I would be happy to include you on the action on this topic. I would LOVE to offer a model of collaborative workflow in support of an authoring service, but I fall short of the “daisy-chain” every time.
Sounds cool. Looking forward to it.
I’m on holidays until the 15th of August and, I’ll move my home during it, so I have no time, but I will share my ideas when I’ll return to work !
Nautilebleu,
I’ll be happy to have your input any time you have. Unfortunately, this white paper is due for submission by August 15.
Yes I know, this a problem. If I have some time until wednesday I’ll try to organize and translate my reflexion, after that I won’t have Internet connection until the submission end date.
Aaron,
“Exposing a content authoring feature as a service”
Were you thinking of the content to be exposed from a repository via a RSS-like service that is targeted in the manifest or is this more in the authoring environment some how connected to the repository and then generates static xml files included in the pkg?
Ethan,
“is this more in the authoring environment some how connected to the repository and then generates static xml files included in the pkg?”
This is more of how I was looking at it. I wanted to a) propose a learning content model that all SCORM content will conform to, and then expose such a service to promote user-generated content in such a way that when endorsed by the administrators of the system, can be integrated into learning experiences out of the repository — using organization-established “skins” that allow the content to more easily stay in continuity with other learning content.
Now, when you talk about “the content to be exposed from a repository via a RSS-like service that is targeted in the manifest,” I’m not sure I get the picture you’re painting. Can you walk me through a scenario of what it would do, or how it would work?
Okay, well basically i was thinking that with “service” you were talking about content (xml/assets/dita) that had been loaded into the repository at some point(resource pkg) and then delivered to courses.
So when the course ran the manifest would define a link to an external content service and the pkg would have the template for the presentation side to know how to display it. It would need changes as the manifest would need to have attributes for the content address and an attribute for the template address which might be outside the pkg as well. Possibly allowing the lms to adapt/switch the template based on what is requesting the service-cellphone, flash runtime, html browser on a display in a car.
I just misunderstood the “service”, I get it now.
Ethan,
That’s a pretty brilliant concept. I mean, that’s the kind of idea that would’ve made CORDRA work (the federated repositories deal that ADL put out). It’s so obvious to me when you spell it out like that. It’s basically an extension of what Steve and I were discussing above, with an abstraction not just of packaging, but of “delivery.” Very intriguing.
There’s a lot of room to expand here. I’m aiming to have a first draft on this topic up on Google Docs today, and I would certainly welcome you to help write, if not review.
Related to tagging and social bookmarks, how about a means for ad hoc self-enrollment?
I’d like to discover a learning object and just click a link/bookmarklet. That bookmarklet would pop-up a confirmation/password dialog from my LMS to ‘register’ the current page as a SCO.
Data & the SCO could be added to some sort of walled-off holding-pen of my learner data. Letting me create a portfolio with some persistence of training that *I* found and learned from. Imagine having THAT for your annual corporate performance evaluation review.
Tom,
“I’d like to discover a learning object and just click a link/bookmarklet. That bookmarklet would pop-up a confirmation/password dialog from my LMS to ‘register’ the current page as a SCO.”
You should really look at Martin Ebner’s blog, brother. He was just writing me about a similar wish with bookmarklets, using something akin to Tumblr.
I like where you’re going with the persistence idea that’s firewalled — could be advantageous for both learner and the organization.
Tie that together with some discovery using subscription to RSS by keywords (or objectives, or competencies) and you accomplish intelligent tutoring, comptency mapping, performance management… all with a handy assist of the learners themselves. Talk about learner engagement.
I like where this is going. Ultimately, an open system that allows structured aggregation would be awesome.
Abstraction of the content package to fairly granular, field based pools would allow for some VERY powerful possibilities. Like the content package, but don’t like the behavior of a course component, rework that component to behave the way you want without having to touch the content layer. Want your own branding for a common source design package – easy. Want to replace a few of the images or the audio used in the course, that’s easy to if it’s done right.
Modularizing content and building it so that we have maintainability (a far cry from what is typical) is where it’s at! The current momentum of Web 2.0 trends also seems to indicate that ‘anything can be a SCO’ could be a viable model (bookmarklets). Let the owners system determine how to best display the content. A package functions when delivered, but the behavior can be modified because of the virtues of a well abstracted content architecture.
Extend this further into open competency mapping and equivalent qualifying interventions… Wow – how cool would that be? An example:
In a galaxy of our own, a time not far from now, a parent searches the open competency database for approved packages for their homeschooled 1st grader. There are a variety of direction packages that share core elements, skills, and knowledge -but there is some variance in the focus and talent exploration. The parent decides to select a specific competency path.
Parallel with this path, a preset pairing of interventions has been determined as well as a discovered (search) pairing of both approved and unauthorative activities, sources, and other learning opportunities. The parent, or perhaps the teacher, is able to tune both the competency path and configure the session and activity types from an approved set for reaching each path milestone.
If the parent, or the student, finds something new they have the opportunity to tag this new resource back to the milestone (community driven competency resource expansion).
Not necessarily on the courseware path — but it’s related. What a tangent…