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Learning
Technology publication
of IEEE Computer Society |
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Volume 8 Issue 1/2 |
ISSN 1438-0625 |
January/April 2006 |
Revisiting the -ilities: Adjusting the
Distributed Learning Marketplace, Again?
SCORM Frameworker: An Approach to Supporting Implementation of
Standards-based Distance Learning
Identifying and Embracing the Trade-offs in
Creating SCORM-Conformant SCOs
The JADL 2012 Integrated Prototype Architecture
Integrating the Delta 3D Engine with a
SCORM-Managed Learning Environment
DARWARS: An Architecture for Delivering
Experiential Training
Intelligent Delivery of Sharable Content Objects
– An Integrated Solution to Enhance Learning
Authoring Tools for ITS with consideration of
SCORM Standard
NLTML: A Mark-up Language for
Transformation-based Question Generation
The Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative held its second
Workshop of SCORM Sequencing and Navigation at the
The preponderance of military technical training takes the form of traditional, didactic instruction in declarative and procedural knowledge. The use cases chosen to focus the development of SCORM naturally focused on that type of instruction. Other instructional forms have begun to generate considerable interest since the early days of SCORM development and the Workshop sought to focus on these issues.
The first paper, by Avron Barr, takes a broad look at the distance-learning horizon and finds
challenges to be faced. The Haynes (et al)
paper proposes a solution to what many find the daunting complexity of SCORM
for traditional instructional designers and developers. Bill Blackmon, from the Learning Systems
Architecture Lab at Carnegie-Mellon University, brings to bear several years of
experience teaching instructional developers how to modify their practices to
build SCORM-conforming content and suggests there is not a single, correct
method but a continuum of possibilities.
Chris Bray, from the Joint ADL Co-Lab in
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Eric J. Roberts,
Ph. D Chief Scientist for Learning Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative |
Revisiting the -ilities: Adjusting the Distributed Learning Marketplace, Again?
The SCORM Reference Model, developed and evangelized by the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative, has had a profound impact on a large part of the eLearning marketplace. In particular, for managed, browser-based training, SCORM’s establishment of a set of packaging and runtime standards created an open market for training content. Courses were no longer tied to a proprietary learning management system (LMS). Instruction management and instructional design could evolve independently.
SCORM also created the possibility of sharing content and creating new content by assembling existing elements. Eventually, this vision could dramatically reduce the cost of training development. The ADL is just now rolling out another foundational element of this vision of reuse: a content registration system that will allow teachers and content developers to find and preview content that might be useful to them. This central library for learning materials might reside across dozens or even hundreds of repositories.
SCORM’s rapid acceptance has been surprising. It has been adopted by dozens of LMS vendors, and will be mandated as a requirement for all DL content created by and for the US DoD. Moreover, it has already found broad adoption by major corporations, and even by some entire countries as their training content standard. Key to SCORM’s success is the realization that customers and vendors both win if market inefficiencies and fragmentation are removed. From all indications, the impact of SCORM will be global and long-lasting. But standards must adjust to the times, and there are some problems on the horizon.
SCORM Clouds
There are many issues that the SCORM community is dealing with and that limit or interfere with broader adoption of the reference model. (SCORM is a collection of standards, which are in part based on standards established by other organizations.) Here’s a list of some of the well-known issues.
Success
The biggest problem SCORM faces at this point in time is its own success. Escalating global demand for support, better tools for a wider and wider range of content developers, vendor certification, training, and so on have outstripped available resources, especially as the ADL has focused on developing and deploying their ADL-R content registry – the next critical element to their vision for plug-and-play courseware assembly. The search is on for an appropriate steward organization for SCORM, one which can involve the international SCORM community in the continued maintenance and evolution of the standards.
Reuse
When fully developed, the ADL-R content registry will make it possible for students, teachers, and instructional designers to find content that might be relevant to their purposes. That doesn’t mean anyone will be motivated to do so. Current “time and materials” funding of DoD contractors removes the financial incentive, and it is unclear whether the DoD’s Instruction 1322, which mandates reuse, will have any means of enforcement. Reuse requires organizational change. Content must be authored and maintained with the intent of it being reused. Incentives must be changed. This kind of change will take time, and may take root first in other countries, or in corporations , where incentives are more easily changed.
S1000D
One of the current activities of the ADL is an exploration of the possibility of integrating the S1000D standard for technical manuals with the SCORM reference model for training materials. On-the-job performance support has always been a part of the ADL’s vision for distributed learning, and in many kinds of jobs, performance support takes the form of technical manuals. But technical manuals and training materials have very different life cycles, different user motivations, and different expectations of interactivity (training requires assessment and feedback). There are technical issues too, including the fact that S1000D content is not currently read in a browser but rather using proprietary reader software.
Changing Training Requirements in the DoD
Computer savvy recruits expect a rather more sophisticated type of interaction than is typically delivered in browser-based training. The training audience itself is now composed not only of active duty personnel, but Reserves, National Guard, coalition partners, other government agencies, and even civilian contractors. The missions are more diverse and often require extensive training in material unrelated to combat. And the life cycle of relevant knowledge continues to accelerate. As one general put it, Al Qaida is the fastest learning organization in the world. These changes require innovation in training, which in turn puts pressure on SCORM. No doubt, requirements in other major SCORM communities are also evolving.
Intelligent Tutoring Systems
Despite a long history of experiments that never find commercial application, the use of AI technologies in the delivery of on-line training still holds great promise. AI components can coach, remediate and review. They converse with the student and keep an elaborate model of the student’s history, knowledge, and learning styles. Unfortunately, these experimental systems are typically monolithic, with all student activity, keystroke by keystroke, monitored by the AI components. To some extent, this is antithetical to SCORM’s model of SCOs (which reflect discrete learning objectives) launched individually by the LMS. It is critical to automate the instructor’s role in online training, in order to reduce the cost of high-quality training. Experiments continue, but it might be that these monolithic systems find their first deployment in non-managed instructional settings.
Experiential Learning
A similar situation exists with one of the most important new categories of computer-based training, the use of “virtual training environments” to give students relevant practice and feedback. Simulators have been in widespread use in a variety of military and civilian training applications. But new technology, including PC-based simulations and games, on-line games, multiplayer games, and persistent virtual worlds offer great promise for high-quality training in a variety of domains. The question is, how will these inexpensive, distributed virtual training environments, integrate with managed instructional environments? Multiple students, with different learning objectives, who take different roles in a scenario, and who might together have team performance goals, present one of the most difficult problems. Also, these systems are not browser-based. There’s a lot of active investigation of this area, including DARPA’s DARWARS project, several prototype projects at the Joint ADL Co-Lab, and a joint effort by SISO and the IEEE Learning Technology Standard Committee.
In addition to these pedagogy-related developments, software, network, and computing technologies continue to evolve. Wireless devices, streaming media, service-oriented architecture, semantic mediation, on-line collaboration and community, intelligent agents, and speech-based computing all have great potential, and will impact the managed instruction framework in ways we can’t predict. The question is, does the ADL, and the DoD as the world’s biggest training organization, again have a role in shaping the marketplace. And if it does, is it possible to continue to find solutions as brilliant and successful as SCORM.
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Avron Barr Aldo Ventures, Inc. |
SCORM Frameworker: An Approach to Supporting Implementation of Standards-based Distance Learning
SCORM Frameworker (SFW) is a tool developed by Intelligent Automation, Inc. under a contract with the Joint ADL Co-lab, to support course designers and developers in the process of building courseware conforming to the SCORM specification for distributed distance learning. Specifically, SFW supports intelligent course assembly and creation of metadata. Without SFW, the process currently requires individuals with programming expertise to perform these tasks. However, it is our view that course assembly and describing the instructional properties of the courseware in metadata could best be performed by individuals with instructional, rather than programming expertise. Since most commonly individuals are trained in one domain or the other, it is our purpose in developing SFW to enable development of SCORM conforming training that is both instructionally sound and well developed technically.
SFW accomplishes the goal described above by using case-based reasoning (CBR) to match the metadata requirements of a courseware developer’s current task to one or more ‘cases’ of similar courseware developed previously, and use that information to recommend the metadata that needs to be provided for the current instance. The specific form of CBR used for this purpose is ‘conversational,’ in that the user interacts with the CBR engine by both posing and answering questions, where the user’s responses result in an increasingly focused set of recommendations or ‘tips’ for metadata creation. For example, the courseware developer is asked questions about the course profile, the content types, the target learning management system(s), the target repository, and relevant business rules for use and re-use of the content, and other items that will help in determining an efficient but complete set of metadata for the user’s goal. This set of metadata will be optimized for search and discovery of the content, according to applicable business rules.
The distributed distance learning enterprise envisioned using SCORM, provides metadata that can support this effort in a number of ways, including the following:
1. storing and finding appropriate content using repository and/or search engines where relevant metadata might include items such as title, description, keywords;
2. improved instructor support through the content profile, which might include items that specify suitability for different types of students or prerequisites;
3. improved support for business use of content, such as content maintenance or third-party use, where metadata might consist of items such as copyright, author, and version information;
4. improved efficiency in identifying potential content for specific settings where technical requirements for content delivery may be either a limiting or enabling factor;
5. support for learning program management through use of outcome data, where metadata might describe the author’s intent for providing credit or certification upon successful completion of the content.
To support the design of SFW to promote its ‘fit’ in the real world of designing and developing distance learning courseware, IAI conducted a series of focused interviews with individuals who are currently employed as instructional system architects, designers and developers. The interviewees work in a variety of settings, and do not know one another. The implication of these interviews as a whole provide insight into the current state of implementation of standards-based distributed distance learning and how tools like SFW can provide the most support to the implementation effort. The following section summarizes the findings of these interviews.
1. We found that most instances of SCORM implementation were superficial, and done to fulfill a requirement. As such, minimum effort was put into content aggregation and creation of metadata that performed any functions other than allowing the content to run in the SCORM RTE (run time environment) and communicate with a specific learning management system. As such SCORM was fulfilled in letter rather than in spirit.
2. There are specific elements of SCORM that designers/developers find extremely difficult and time consuming.
a) Writing instruction as SCO’s takes more time than writing instruction in the usual way.
b) At the current time, searching for, finding and reviewing existing SCO’s takes more time than creating new ones.
c) The rules for Simple Sequencing and Navigation are exceedingly complex, difficult to understand, and impossible to implement for a non-programmer.
d)
4. Instructional designers and developers believe that tools to support SCORM implementation should do the following:
a) Reduce work and errors in metadata creation;
b) Take information they already consider, and put that information into SCORM;
c) Identify the needed set of metadata attributes, and automate the process of filling it in to the fullest extent possible;
d) Provide the rationale and explanations for the SCORM requirements.
e)
4. SCORM is important now to a limited audience. Within DoD, there is an inconsistency between what is viewed as important at the program level and at the level of the specific services’ programs. At the highest levels, there is strong and growing support for a standards-based approach, including requirements for conformance to SCORM. Nevertheless, at the level of program acquisitions, SCORM is viewed as an additional burden, as an unfunded requirement, unnecessary, and a problem causing price increases and delays.
5. DoD continues its policy of making most awards for content development to the lowest bidder, without regard for the quality of implementation of SCORM, if it is required at all. This policy is viewed by vendors as indicating DoD’s lack of commitment to SCORM and a relatively short “life expectance” for the SCORM requirement. The vendors are therefore unwilling to put their resources into developing expertise, quality tools, and development procedures that lead to improved effectiveness and efficiency in providing SCORM-conforming courseware to their customers.
6. Courseware is largely developed by individuals with little or no training in instruction, learning, or pedagogy. The majority of the work is performed by programmers, subject matter experts, and junior-level “developers” who are trained in using a given set of tools. In fact, more money is paid to artists, videographers and animators, than to most content developers. Individuals with expertise and experience in instructional system design, psychology, or pedagogy are mostly limited to program management functions, with little direct input into the content of instruction.
Based on the information obtained in the interviews, SFW is designed to address these issues by working with a range of metadata standards including SCORM, GEM, Dublin Core, S1000D, and others. Using SFW should improve task efficiency and usability for the developer, allow for cross-team development of content and metadata as well as organizational customization of metadata, and support direct upload to LMSs and CORDRA repositories. SFW also provides a method to verify (both for the developer and the customer) that the resulting content is discoverable within its repository.
While SCORM Frameworker is a tool to support metadata creation, it is our view that it is really an attempt to provide technical support for the ADL enterprise, in ways that may assist the efforts implementation on a larger scale. Some of the features being designed for SFW were not envisioned initially as a part of the tool, but are now considered as crucial to achieving the purpose of this class of tools, based on our interview data. Further development and use of SFW will show whether these objectives can or will be achieved.
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Jacqueline A. Haynes, Ph. D. Intelligent Automation, Incorporated Daniel Fowler Intelligent Automation, Incorporated David Ryan-Jones,
Ph. D. Naval |
Identifying and Embracing the Trade-offs in Creating SCORM-Conformant SCOs
“Is my content SCORM-conformant?” is the most common question I hear as an instructor of SCORM workshops. Although it would appear that this is a yes or no question, the critical question to ask is actually, “How can I use SCORM to attain the level of interoperability I require for my learners?”
Through a series of workshops on SCORM taught at the Learning Systems Architecture Lab, we have found that there is conflict between what people want to do with their content and what they think the label “SCORM-conformant” requires. For the first two years of the workshop, many times when a student asked “Can I make my content SCORM-conformant and do ___?”, the instructor with the instructional design background would say, “No,” while the instructor with the computer engineering background would say, “Yes, but…”
It took years of negotiation for the two instructors to figure out a single answer to give the students. The answer involves asking the student a now-obvious question: “What is it you’re trying to do?” Or at a more technical level, “SCORM enables interoperability, but does not guarantee it. How generic do you want your content to be and still meet your goals?”
Instructional designers are familiar with the trade-offs between contextualization and reusability – the more context you add to an object, the less reusable it is. For example, an eye wash procedure can be created about the general principles of safety and how to safely wash your eyes (high on reusability; low on context), or it can be created to include where the eye wash stations are in the learner’s particular building (high on context; low on reusability).
Likewise, SCOs must be engineered with trade-offs between contextualization and reusability. SCOs can be SCORM-conformant and yet work in only one LMS or they can work in every LMS. This is possible because SCORM is not (and should not be) an all-encompassing specification. SCORM enables interoperability by specifying how engineers create SCOs to communicate with the LMS, but SCORM cannot prevent other types of interactions and dependencies from happening between the SCO and LMS.
What this means to the instructional designer is that there isn’t necessarily a simplistic answer to the question, “Is what I want to do SCORM-conformant?”
Together, instructional designers and engineers must analyze the needs of the learner and deploy SCOs that have the right mix of contextualization and reusability, both from an instructional perspective and a technical perspectivce. It simply makes no sense to make a SCO work in every LMS if it fails to meet the needs of your learners.
Customizing SCORM content
One question that often comes up is, “I thought SCORM guaranteed interoperability. Why is it possible that SCORM content be customized so that it isn’t interoperable?”
SCORM enables interoperability of content by providing a standard API and data model for a SCO to communicate with an LMS. This enables the SCO to ask the LMS for the learner’s name or to report the learner’s score. A SCO that uses the API and the data model will work in any LMS.
However, there are many ways that a SCO could be engineered to not be interoperable. For example:
a SCO could be written for Flash 8 and deployed on computers that do not have Flash 8 installed or that are on networks that prevent Flash objects from being delivered.
A SCO could be written that requires a specific server plug-in to operate. For example, a SCO that includes Quicktime streaming media will only work on LMSs that have the Quicktime streaming server.
Any of these SCOs can be SCORM-conformant, but may not work across all LMSs.
The Customization continuum
A SCO can fall anywhere along a continuum between complete customization and complete generalization. At the far end of customization, a SCO could be developed that only works on one installation of an LMS. At the other end, a SCO could be developed to work on any LMS and run on any web browser on any operating system; at this end, SCOs use only the most generic web technologies (simple HTML and images) and the safest use of the data model elements. Most SCOs will fall in between the two extremes.
The SCORM testability continuum
A SCO can fall anywhere along a continuum that has three specific ranges of SCORM-conformance:
Range 1: not testable because it falls outside the realm of what SCO specifies; these include any SCO that does not use the API, including PDFs, plain HTML files, stand-alone Flash movies, etc.
Range 2: fully testable by the SCORM Test Suite and it follows all the implicit assumptions of the SCORM specification;
Range 3: not testable because it uses the API and data model in ways that violate the spirit of SCORM.
When engineering SCOs, special conditions may require a SCO to fall in Range 3 to meet the needs of the learner, but SCOs that fall in Range 2 are more likely to withstand any differences between LMSs. Many SCOs may not require any communication with the API and fall within Range 1 and this is still SCORM-conformant; many instructional designers fear that they must create SCOs that use the API, but this is not true.
The term “SCO” is used throughout this paper as any content launched by an LMS. Technically, SCORM defines a “SCO” as content that communicates with an LMS through the SCORM API and data model, while an “asset” is any other content that is launched but does not communicate with the LMS.
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William H Blackmon Learning Systems Architecture Lab lsal@lsal.org |
The JADL 2012 Integrated Prototype Architecture
Following the completion of several successful prototypes, the Joint ADL Co-Lab has identified the integration of simulation-based learning experiences and SCORM environments as a primary area of research. The results of our past prototypes have been used to prepare this phase of investigation, which will take a more integrated, less piecemeal approach.
We have developed the “JADL 2012 Integrated Prototype Architecture” (IPA). The IPA is a straw-man model to help guide our investigation; it is NOT a representation of what future policies or revisions to SCORM might require of SCORM-conformant tools, systems, and content. The JADL 2012 IPA is simply a representation of one possible solution to one possible problem space. We intend to use the IPA as a communication tool and sounding board when conducting research. The IPA addresses simulation integration by proposing a system-of-systems approach consisting of small set of infrastructure services and specifications.
The primary component of the IPA is a “Distributed Training Event Coordination Service” (DTECS). The DTECS component works in conjunction with an LMS which has been modified to recognize a new type of SCORM object called a “Lightweight Scenario Format” (LSF) file. LSF is not intended to be a common configuration file format with the ability to initialize all simulations; an LSF file cannot be used by itself to initialize any simulation.
LSF files are represented using an XML-based syntax and can easily be created, modified, and reused within and between courses. LSFs can be designed independently of any particular training system, registered in the ADL Registry (the ADL-R), and stored in globally-accessible content repositories.
LSFs contain high-level information that can describe key elements of a scenario that will be common to all training systems which are capable of executing the scenario. These elements are similar to those which are described by the DARWARS OCM model – Objectives, Conditions, and Measures. Objectives can be correlated with IMS Simple Sequencing objectives. Conditions can describe startup factors like equipment types, locations, environmental factors, etc. Measures describe assessable factors which can be used to provide values to objectives. The LSF file also includes scenario roles and indicates which roles are required, which are optional, and which can be filled by intelligent agents if available.
To initialize a training system, some proprietary configuration information is almost always required. In IPA terminology, this is called a Local Training Package (LTP). It is the LTP file (not LSF) which contains configuration data for a specific training system. LTPs are built from LSFs, and specify how a particular training system needs to be configured to deliver a scenario that supports the objectives, conditions, and measures that are specified in the LSF.
In a fully implemented IPA instance, a new type of LMS (called a “Brokering LMS”) has been defined which assists users in the process of locating and initializing the best, most accessible training system that is available to them at any given moment. This process starts with embedding an LSF file within a piece of courseware. When a brokering LMS encounters an LSF file, it locates and searches one or more DTECS implementations to see if each contains an LTP file matching the LSF file. After merging the results, the LMS will auto-generate a web page which lists the learner’s options. A learner may be able to execute the simulation immediately, or may be required to schedule a training event if additional roles are needed.
When the user is ready to begin executing a simulation, the LMS transfers them to a DTECS-provided “lobby.” This is essentially a web page which offers a brief idle period during which simulation participants can gather. The lobby provides learners with a smooth transition from an asynchronous to a synchronous learning environment. When all roles have been filled, the DTECS initializes the simulation and waits for measures to be reported. These measures are passed back to the originating LMS where they are used assign values to Simple Sequencing Objectives.
Overall, the use of LSF and LTP files in conjunction with Brokering Learning Management Sy