A Brief History of SCORM I was at an international conference on standards for learning technology in Versailles, France, listening to a senior official of the French Ministry of Education. In his closing keynote address, he was spelling out the priorities for the national education agenda, which now includes lifelong learning and workforce performance. "We must embrace standards," he said, "SCORM is complicated, but we must adopt it and use it." The Sharable Content Object Reference Model, or "SCORM," is a specification issued by the Advanced Learning Initiative (ADL), a joint project of the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Labor with participation from key industry stakeholders. For an official in France to come out in favor of a standard that was born on the other side of the ocean is a tribute to its importance. How did we get here? About fifteen years ago, the Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC), started work on recommendations for standardizing content delivered on MS-DOS based systems. Years later, significant problems with the AICC approach showed up, due to a fixation on legacy computer-based training (CBT) and lack of support for non-English languages. Worse, it suffered from baffling ambiguities. Compliance with AICC promised interoperability, but still required expensive custom adapters for various interpretations. Only a few trading partners ever realized cost savings. Other international groups with a broader constituency, such as the IMS Global Consortium and the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC), approached the problem from a wider perspective. They looked at learning as an active experience that take place in a variety of group, school or enterprise contexts. Exchanging information about learners and content seemed to be the best area to investigate first. The ADL initiative drew from the earlier AICC work, incorporated key aspects of the IMS and IEEE LTSC work, and produced SCORM. Up until a few years ago, integrating content with a Learning Management System (LMS) was daunting. The costs and inability to deploy in a timely manner made it impractical. But today, with SCORM, you can take content from various vendors and authoring tools, and deploy it on various systems in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. A number of vendors now implement the first mature version of SCORM, version 1.2. We are now seeing true "plug-and-play" learning content. For example, publishing a SCORM-compliant course through Click2learn's Aspen LMS takes just seconds. The longest part of the process is the automated file transfer from the publisher's computer to the server. And content development tools such as Click2learn's Aspen Learning Content Management System (LCMS) or ToolBook authoring product, automatically generate SCORM-compliant content that runs through any SCORM-compliant LMS. We have come a long way. But there's more important work ahead. Development in pedagogical quality standards (e.g. the ASTD E-learning Certification Courseware (ECC) standard) help remind us that the real prize is not the technological feat, it is whether learning takes place. Every stakeholder in the learning process has a interest in supporting and contributing to technical standards to cut costs and ensure longevity, portability and interoperability of content and systems. Standards are not an end in themselves, of course, but they are necessary enablers for the positive changes in knowledge, skills and attitude that result from using learning technology. ---Claude Ostyn     Click2learn Learning Standards Strategist

Top of Page     Resources on Standards at Click2learn You can always turn to Click2learn to learn more about the intricacies of SCORM and other standards. As our resident expert, Claude Ostyn has assembled a set of documents and utilities to help you understand this important standard and be successful in implementing or purchasing content that works seamlessly with our standards-compliant Aspen Enterprise Productivity Suite. Claude has been involved with Learning Technology Standards for several years as a contributor and member of various working groups of the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee and the IMS Global Learning Consortium. He was also part of the technical consultants team that helped in the genesis of the SCORM specifications. Check out our resources at http://home.click2learn.com/en/products/standards.asp    Top of Page   ADL Co-Lab Adopts Aspen to Showcase SCORM Content for Organizations Building Learning Initiatives The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative has created a network of three ADL Co-Laboratories (Co-Labs), which serve as the focal point for large-scale cooperative research, development, implementation and assessment of learning technologies and related products. In addition to sharing research, subject-matter expertise, content and tools, the Co-Lab develops, promotes and helps implement common guidelines and standards for the industry. Recently, the ADL Co-Lab implemented Click2learn's Aspen Enterprise Productivity Suite in an effort to better evangelize SCORM and the benefits of establishing a single learning standard in the industry. The Co-Lab will use Aspen's standards-based Learning Management System (LMS) to demonstrate SCORM content to government, educational, military and other organizations that are interested in deploying learning technologies and initiatives. Aspen is particularly valuable to the Co-Lab in this situation, as it allows the ADL to demonstrate SCORM content operating on a technological platform that is commercially available today. In return, Click2learn, a long-time proponent and contributor in the development of standards such as SCORM, receives real-time feedback from the ADL, the original creators of SCORM, about issues that arise when authoring SCORM content and about the way organizations use SCORM in real-world scenarios. Learn more about the ADL Co-labs at http://www.adlnet.org.  Top of Page   New Upgrade: ToolBook 8.6 Released! We are proud to announce the release of ToolBook 8.6, Click2learn's authoring solution for performance-based simulations and content! We tapped into the large, loyal global ToolBook community to learn what new features they needed to be able to continue meeting their organization's dynamic simulation and content demands. As a result, this latest upgrade has new capabilities that will make it even easier for you to author, customize and deliver effective learning content to meet the unique learning needs of your organization. This new version includes: Support for Sun's Java Virtual Machine Option to deploy ToolBook content on a non-LMS-hosting server. Improved support for Freedom Scientific's Jaws screen reader for assisted learning Improved Windows Media Player version 9 support To learn more, go to http://home.click2learn.com/en/toolbook/toolbook_instructor.asp    Top of Page   Aspen Tip of the Month Use Favorites to Get Info Quickly Customize your Aspen home page by setting up Favorites. Favorites are shortcut links to specific categories, knowledge documents, and course links on Aspen. To add a link, click the Add to Favorites icon (green plus sign) associated with the topic or document you wish to add. To see your list, select Favorites on the Learn menu or by using the Favorites list on your home page. Your information will be just a click away. To see the Favorites on your home page, click profile in the upper-right corner of Aspen and then select Preferences. On the Preferences page, select Favorites and also the number of favorites links you want to display. Click OK (at the bottom of the page) to save your new settings.    Top of Page   Achieve Business Results Faster with Aspen Training At Click2learn, Aspen training is not just product training. Aspen training courses delve into best practices, real-life scenarios for using the product, and tips on how you might leverage the system at your company. Leveraging Aspen Training (http://home.click2learn.com/en/downloads/Leveraging_Aspen_Training.pdf) offers more details on how our curriculum can help your company achieve business results faster. For more details on Aspen courses and training opportunities, contact Product Training and Documentation at Training.Documentation@click2learn.com.    Top of Page   Click2learn Open Enrollment Opportunities If you have only a few employees who need to take Aspen training, sign them up for an Open Enrollment class. There, they can receive professional Aspen training while interacting with employees of other companies that also use Aspen. Open Enrollment may be just the option for administrators or authors who are new to your company. To register for an upcoming class, visit http://home.click2learn.com/en/training/Aspen/aspen2_training_courses.asp    Top of Page