E-learning eSeminars from Adobe

I just saw this announcement in the Adobe Captivate forum and thought I would share it here on the blog: 

I wanted to say hello and let you all know that we (Adobe) will be hosting a series of eLearning eSeminars beginning next week, for both beginners and more advanced users of Captivate and the eLearning Suite.  These sessions will generally be held every two weeks (on alternating Wednesdays, skipping the winter shutdown at the end of December) and will aim to provide basic information about eLearning and Captivate in the basic session, and to provide a forum and resource to advanced users through the advanced eSeminars. The advanced sessions specifically will focus on a wide variety of relevant topics, with the ambition of providing a sound resource worthy of recurring attendance. I hope many of you will be able to join me as we launch this new series, and I hope you as a community find the seminars a valuable resource.I will generally mix theory and practical demonstration in these events. Though generally speaking the emphasis will be on use of the tools to achieve sound professional results. If you would like to join us, click the pertinant link below, and then register for the event to get the connection details.

 
BASIC: Meeting Educational Objectives with 21st Century E-Learning Development & Management Tools >> http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1566499&loc=en_us

 
ADVANCED:  21st Century Digital Literacy Skills; Tools for the next generation >> http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1566510&loc=en_us

 
- Allen

 
Dr. Allen Partridge,

Product Evangelist, Adobe eLearning Suite, Captivate & Shockwave

Adobe Systems, Inc.

Source: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/536331?tstart=0

SCORM CMI element posters

Mike Richards has just shared two posters he created with the SCORM CMI element structure on his site. Now it’s a bit geeky and most Adobe Captivate users wont really get to use it, but for others who like to dig a little deeper into the foundations of SCORM these are excellent.

There are two posters in A3 format. One for SCORM 1.2 and one for SCORM 2004 3rd and 4th edition.

You can view and download the SCORM posters here

SCORM 2004 4th edition

I just noticed that ADL has released SCORM 2004 4th edition.

They released it on March 31st so it will probably take a while before the mainstream LMS’ will support it, but it does have some interesting new things.

Among the enhancements are:

• Sharing generic run-time data between SCOs:  SCOs within a single activity tree can now use a new ADL extension run-time data model element to store and share learner tracking information between SCOs.
• Sharing additional objective data between SCOs:  SCO-reported objective information (via cmi.objectives.n), such as min, max, and raw scores, can now be shared across SCOs and across activity trees.
• Jump Navigation Request:  Content developers can now directly affect conditional branching across the activity tree from within a SCO without the evaluation of sequencing control modes. This allows more flexibility in sequencing and rendering the LMS-provided table of contents.
• Rolling-up partial completion information:  Partial completion status reported by SCOs will now roll-up. This enables more accurate evaluation of an activity tree’s partial completion status, rather than relying strictly on the Boolean complete/incomplete values.

My favourite part is the new possibility to share data between SCOs. Prior to this version all data stored by SCOs have only been available to that particular SCO. You couldn’t store data in SCO1 and retrieve it in SCO2. With this new enhancement it will be possible to set up data storage’s, which can be shared between SCOs.

I have used a “hack” to perform this operation before, but the trouble is that it goes outside the SCORM standard and will only work on LMS’s, which specifically are “enhanced” to work with this hack. This new version of SCORM will make it possible to share data within the SCORM standard.

Cheating in SCORM

Phillip Hutchison whipped up a proof-of-concept on how advanced users could cheat and set the course as completed with a score of 100% (http://pipwerks.com/journal/2009/03/22/cheating-in-scorm/).

It poses an interesting problem as more and more cooperations are using SCORM based courses for certified training.

I just read on the www.adlgov.net page that they released a fix to this security issue. You can read more about it and download the instructions here: http://www.adlnet.gov/Technologies/scorm/SCORMSDocuments/SCORM%20Resources/Resources.aspx

SCORM Diagnostic SCO

The SCORM Diagnostic SCO is developed by Claude Ostyn and allows you to test your LMS SCORM runtime environment capabilities. It manages SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 standards.

This is a great way to ensure that you LMS adheres to the SCORM protocol and can be used to test various suppliers before you sign a contract with them.

You can download the diagnostic SCO and read the documentation from the link below:

http://www.ostyn.com/standards/scorm/samples/proddingSCOwrap.htm