Scorm 2.0: perspective and background

Scorm 2.0: perspective and background

SCORM is often referred to as the ‘de facto’ standard for learning content. There is little question that it has provided immense utility to learning communities globally. It was conceived, however, at a time when the core issues for technology supported learning were very different to the ones that Learning, Education and Training (LET) communities currently face. SCORM and the specifications and standards from which the profile is constituted were developed in response to the need to achieve portability of courses between Learning Management Systems; a ‘mono-dimensional’ separation of packaged content from its delivery. Possibly as a result of this, SCORM implementations have typically resulted in single-user, self-paced online instruction instead of more creative models.

While there is still some value in that objective, the scope of what needs to be achieved and the issues that have become the focus of learning communities in education, government, corporate and defense sectors are now very much broader than purely content aggregation, portability and sequencing. There is evidence that the new requirements for SCORM 2.0 are already being considered with the broader scope in mind (See SCORM 2.0 Home on LETSI and related documents and communities available at that site), so this is just one additional perspective on both the functionality and boundaries that might be considered for SCORM 2.0.

During the period in which SCORM has been available for implementation there have been a number of significant changes in relation to content, infrastructure and the commonly available web-based applications. The sum of these changes would make it nonsensical to redevelop SCORM as it has existed in version 1.x. The emergence of concepts and technologies characterized as “Web 2.0” While there is definitely hype associated with the term Web 2.0 and debate about the validity given the reliance Web 1.0 technology. Since the beginning of the web it has always been possible for individuals to form communities, share content become individual publishers. Nonetheless, the way Web 2.0 is described by O’Reilly at does provide a basis for understanding the value rather than the hype. have impacted many of the communication and interaction models on the web. It is now commonplace for LET discussions to focus on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in learning, and this in itself, drives a change in scope from that of SCORM 1.x. In a recent presentation to LearnX 2008 in Melbourne, Professor Nigel Paine proposed five key shifts that would impact learning, education and training. He described them as the shifts from: