Background – cmi5 & SCORM
With RISC’s early adoption of xAPI, it made sense to become the first cmi5 conformant LMS on the market. cmi5 is essentially the use case for using xAPI when launching learning content from an LMS. Launching content from an LMS is the use case that SCORM set out to solve in the early 2000s. SCORM’s success was based on the promise of seamless integration of content and learning management systems without custom programming or middle-wear.
Those of us developing online learning content through the 1990s remember these as days of the wild, wild West. Authoring tools and content providers regularly wrote completion data to a proprietary database, and records had to be imported into the LMS. Before web-based training, LAN or WAN-based content often required running an application first and then opening the content file making the launch-string unique to the content or authoring tool. Needless to say, interoperability was just a hope and it took lots of custom code to ensure a smooth user experience. Of course, all that custom code had to be maintained and updated as systems evolved.
Even in the very early days of SCORM adoption, I’d regularly advise clients to test any content or authoring tool with their LMS to head-off any problems before a check was written. Eventually these issues faded away. The release of Rustici Software’s SCORM Cloud provided a neutral playground for testing content and conformance – along with its promise of interoperability, which continued to improve.
cmi5 to the Rescue
cmi5 picks up as SCORM begins to show its age. cmi5 combines the flexibility and power of xAPI with the packaging and structure of SCORM. Like SCORM, cmi5’s development was driven by the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative and is now on track for adoption as an IEEE standard. While technological advancements, such as the proliferation of REST APIs, necessitated the move from SCORM to xAPI and cmi5, it also provided an opportunity to learn from SCORM’s short-comings and worked to close those gaps as the new standards took shape.
These improvements include the ability for content to reside outside the LMS and take advantage of distributed servers and also launching content in the same window to better support a mobile learning environment that didn’t exist when SCORM took shape. One of the other gaps closed by cmi5 is a better-defined completion action. SCORM leaves open to interpretation if a content object was completed and satisfied. For example, a person could complete a course, but fail the proficiency test rendering a status of completed, but not passed. What if this combination is not stable?
The Challenge – No Credit from iSPRING 11
RISC has a number of clients that develop content using the iSPRING Suite of authoring tools. Most had been publishing content to SCORM before loading to the LMS for a number of years but, with the release of iSPRING 11, suddenly some modules were not returning credit, leaving students out of compliance. So, what changed? Interpretation and application of the standard.
What is a Measurable or Graded Object?
A Measurable or Graded Object is normally something we use to define “satisfaction”. That could be anything from simply viewing a course to mastering a knowledge check, or completing a series of activities. In the past, there were two main ways RISC clients defined satisfaction for a content module. Either they passed a test, or they reviewed “X of Y” pages in the content. Both completion methods are native options in iSPRING and have functioned identically for years. If a traditional, knowledge-based test was included in the content module and a student passed the test, the module would return a completion status of “Complete” and a success status of “Passed”. It takes both of these values to trigger a satisfied status in the LMS.
With the release of iSPRING 11, content no longer sends a passed status if a module is set to require “X of Y” pages/slides to be viewed. Instead, it sends a “null” status that the LMS cannot resolve. Graded tests still send a completion and a passed as do older “X of Y” modules published in versions before 11. So, how do you change the way a long-time, stable product applies to a standard? Let’s take a look at what is really required.
What does the SCORM Specification Require?
Not much really… The SCORM “Testing Requirements” mandate the LMS to accept a completion and success (amongst others) status as a prerequisite for communicating with content, but there is no requirement for the SCORM 2004 content to send this data. According to the SCORM Run Time Environment documentation, if a package doesn’t have any graded objects, the package should send an ‘unknown’ status. Is it possible that iSPRING suddenly decided that completing “X of Y” slides is no longer a graded or measured item after 20 years? Not likely based on the old publish option discussed below.
Two Bad Solutions
Old Publish
SPRING 11 does have an “old” publish option for SCORM that does still work sending a completion for a “X of Y” slides module. While this works today, it could be changed to match the output of the “new” publish option. Moreover, legacy options like this are often short-lived to help existing users get up the learning curve associated with a new version. Once the new version is widely adopted, the “classic” version begins to disappear.
Change the LMS Logic
A second, but equally bad solution, is to change the LMS logic. Couldn’t the LMS just give credit based for a content-only module that returns an “Unknown” status for satisfied? Sure, but you wouldn’t want that to be the case for most content that requires some kind of passing criteria to be met. Could the solution be limited to just iSPRING SCORM modules using the “X of Y” completion action published in version 11 or later? Potentially, but now that customization has to be supported with every future release. The best path is cmi5.
Why is cmi5 the Path Forward?
Instead of publishing to SCORM, change the output type to cmi5 and these problems go away. Why? You may not believe it, but the “Complete versus Passed” debate has been an issue with SCORM for more than 20 years. While it makes sense to any of us who ever went to school that a person can complete a class and still fail that class, SCORM left this up for interpretation. While this problem has lessened over the years as tools become better aligned, this inconsistency was still lurking in the background to bite us with the new iSPRING release.
Established Move On Criteria
cmi5 learned from the problems these looser guidelines caused with SCORM. The cmi5 specification explicitly defines “Move On Criteria“. The cmi5 moveOn value is used by the LMS to determine if the AU has been sufficiently completed in order to “move on” to the next AU. The following values are allowed for the moveOn property.
- Passed
If the LMS receives a statement with the verb “Passed”, then the LMS will consider the AU satisfied. Please note that if you issue a “Passed” statement and include a score, that score must exceed the masteryScore contained in the contextTemplate document of the State API. - Completed
If the LMS receives a statement with the verb “Completed”, then the LMS will consider the AU satisfied. - CompletedAndPassed
In this case the LMS must receive two statements; one with the cmi5 verb “Completed” and one with the cmi5 verb “Passed”. The AU is considered satisfied only when both statements have been received. - CompletedOrPassed
If the LMS receives a statement with either of the cmi5 verbs “Completed” or “Passed”, then the LMS will consider the AU satisfied. - NotApplicable
The LMS will consider the AU satisfied as soon as the student registers for the course.
Not only does this make clear what status values a learning management system can expect, and what actions to take, it helps ensure that all content, authoring tools and LMSs interpret a student’s status consistently. Another benefit of cmi5 is that the LMS administrator can override move-On criteria. Check out Section 10 of the cmi5 specification or this blog article by Art Werkenthin on “What is Move-On Criteria?”
Interested in Learning More?
Curious about xAPI and cmi5? Want to put your xAPI data to use? Unsure how to xACTION can enable your learning ecosystem? Contact RISC today at risc@risc-inc.com or 281-480-7910.
Mr. Welder’s career is founded in traditional instructional design and computer-based training development. He is a certified Development Dimensions International facilitator, a Kirkpatrick Certified Evaluator and facilitator of the Ohio State University curriculum development program. In addition to working in industry, Mr. Welder has held adjunct faculty positions at Bowling Green State University, Ohio and the College of the Mainland, Texas. Mr. Welder has been published in both Training Magazine as well as US Business Review.