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.
