Learning SCORM

SCORM is the major e-learning standard nowadays and it defines how the e-learning industry packages, describes, structures, delivers and tracks e-learning modules. It stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model and its current version is SCORM 2004. Most organizations however standardize on courses and learning platforms that are SCORM 1.2 compliant, due to the slow adoption and the unneeded complexity of SCORM 2004. Anyway, the world is big and open, and unless you like begin locked in with one particular vendor you better make sure both your learning infrastructure (LMS) and learning content are SCORM compatible and/or certified. Open standards ARE the way forward.

Many people however ask me what SCORM is, what is does and how it works. So today I provide you with two links to help you out.

• First of all there is a free e-learning course (SCOurse) that explains the basics of SCORM. You can find it on http://projects.aadlcolab.org/scourse/latestgreatest/viewer.htm
• Second there is an initiative from the (former) owners of SCORM, ADL labs. It is called SCORM School and is a paying course that consists of 4 weeks of online labs and offline study and tasks. I took it over a year ago and I must say it was well done and enlightening. The current cost is 395$ and you can check for the next sessions on their site http://www.academiccolab.org/initiatives/scormschool.html
  

SCORM goes LETSI

SCORM was developed by the US defense originally, and is now spread beyond their initial imagination allover the planet as the de facto e-learning standard. (Well, actually the previous version SCORM 1.2 because the SCORM 2004 specification is too complex for most vendors and content builders I would argue.)

Just heard that SCORM specification has found a new home. A loosely coupled federation of organisations will keep on maintaining and developing the SCORM standards. The organisation is called LETSI but I forgot what it stands for. Expect the new organisation to find out its way of working and governance in the first quarter of 2008. And I think later on we will see specifications coming out to get web service and SOA standards for e-learning.

L7: ROI for learning braindump

The learning 2007 conference has started yesterday evening and is now at full speed. During the opening session there was an interview with Doug Lynch from Wharton university. He claims ROI is a false number and the learning profession should move towards other forms of evidence to prove its value. Actually he used a quite strong word to describe the significance of an ROI number but I'm not going to repeat it here, both because I didn't get it well and because it's a dirty word that would bring down the level of this blog :-).

I went to his session this morning. Here is my dump:

• We live in a knowledge economy and more people learn in companies than in schools. However there are no peer reviewed studies of ROI in companies. That is worrying.
• It is not that ROI cannot be done, but it is very complex to do and not necessarily meaningful. A quick poll of the audience says 71% say their companies do not have an accurate ROI measurement in place.
  
• Learning is accounted for under GAAP as an expense, even if we talk about it as an investment in people
• Some reasons why ROI is not what we necessarily need: ROI is outcome based but in a learning organization for example it is the process of continuous improvement that matters. For ROI you need to define, measure and monetize all variables that make up the benefits and the costs of learning, while controlling for all variables except for learning. What goes into ROI is also very specific to the company and context.
  
• All things being equal, what is the impact of learning? Well guess what, all other things that affect performance are not equal, performance is affected by lots of things we cannot control for in the calculation.
  
• What we are actually are talking about is the IMPACT of learning, and evidences of that instead of the financial number related to outcome benefits and associated costs ratio.
• So we should all be like researchers and find evidence and validate that in a scientific way. Work with the evidence you can gather or with what is easily quantifiable.
  
• Americans are typically asking a lot of questions and interrupt the flow of the presentation and go into side discussions much more than you will see happening on European conferences. That is not necessarily bad, but at this point I lost it so I don't really know what we could do instead ROI. We did not get to the end or half of the slides, but they will be on the learningwiki.com site later on so maybe I'll get the point of the session later.
  

At a previous conference I remember in a similar session some people and vendors boosting on how they got a number and cracked the holy grail on proving learning value. Then the last speaker came and declared that mankind has been teaching each other stuff since the dawn of time, and we still do not know how to measure its value, although we all feel it does matter. So who started the whole ROI saga in learning anyway? Was it the business that noticed learning and wanted to manage it like any other service or investment? Or was it the learning function that wanted a place at the table and decided it should come up with a ROI number to achieve that?
At the end of the session I'm still as confused about the ROI debate as before. I have more reasons to believe that ROI is not the unifying answer. But I still have no idea as to what other evidences to replace it with. So hopefully I'll get it later and in the mean time stick to Kirkpatrick.

Learning theory video's

You can view 4 free video's on learning theory on the site http://www.learningwiki.com/theory. Prof. Stanton Wortham from Penn University talks in a clear and understandable way about behaviorism, cognitivism and sociocultural learning theory.

elearning mysellingskills.com

Just tried out the demo of mysellingskills.com, a brand new e-learning site to develop your selling skills. It is made by instruxion (Belgium) and a license costs 250 euro to access the whole library.
I like their approach: these courses show that e-learning has definitely moved away from the text-based screens into media-rich and almost film-like stories. The backside is that you can't learn at a quicker pace and need to passively indulge the rhythm of the course as it develops in front of your eyes. And there are no transcripts of the story which makes the course inaccessible for the hearing impaired. But that aside the course made a good impression, and I like the initiative to throw this on the Internet in a yearly subscription mode.

e-Quality project for learning

Another European-funded project on Quality in e-learning, the e-Quality project has released a free DVD with an overview of quality processes on learning and e-learning. The project also released a software eLUP to model quality in e-learning processes.

http://www.e-quality-eu.org/home.html

I was in an e-learning quality seminar last week, where Dr. Ulf-Daniel Ehlers mentions there are a lot of quality tools for learning out there. Hundreds. But not one that stands above the other and becomes a generally accepted one. Maybe this one? Maybe SEVAQ? (I'll blog on a similar project SEVAQ later.)

Mobile learning

One of the interest areas of the learning industry right now is mobile learning. Devices are getting even more widespread and powerful, with decent network access. Take the iPhone and the likes as an example. And in some areas of the world it also makes much, much more sense to use a device everyone already has as a learning delivery vehicle instead of more expensive computers.

Anyway, I wanted to share a link to this platform to create free mobile applications:
http://www.mobisitegalore.com/

Personally I don't use my cellphone for networking because it is still very expensive here in Belgium to do so. But once that obstacle gets out of the way, I might be tempted for a question or module a day on a topic. Or to interact with the speaker/trainer via SMS. Or to send in a picture of my work for review. Or anything else people will come up with...

Study: E-Learning Spending on the Rise

Another study, this time from Global Industry Analysts Inc., “eLearning: A Global Strategic Business Report,” says e-learning is on the rise. Frankly, predictions of e-learning futures have always looked like that, and if those from years ago would have been accurate it would have been omnipresent. That as a side note, the study does shed some interesting light on the distribution of e-learning in the world and relative market shares.

• 60% of corporate e-learning is in the US
• 15% is in Europe, the second largest market
• Japanese and Asian markets are smaller, but due for a catch up in the next years

Moodle + Second Life = Sloodle

I stumbled across a project that aims to integrate the most popular open source LMS Moodle with the most popular 3D internet environment Second Life. It is called Sloodle.

As they describe it:

Sloodle is a project to integrate the VLE platform Moodle with 3D immersive settings such as Second Life. Imagine a Moodle course that, if you wanted, could turn into a proper 3D interactive classroom with all your Moodle resources available to your students in the virtual world.

QTI Tutorial

You can find a nice tutorial on the technical details of the QTI specification on the Cetis web site.
QTI is a standard (most current version 2.1) for implementing assessment questions and systems. The standard allows to make questions once and import and use them in all compliant testing systems. I'm not a person that can easily read document specification documents, so this little tutorial is a big help!

The adoption of this standard has been much slower than for example SCORM, but LMS systems are increasingly picking it up.

http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/QTI_Training_Guide

SCORM 2004 poster

Do the inner workings of SCORM 2004 confuse you? Rustici software made a free SCORM 2004 poster you can download on their site. As they describe it themselves:

" A handy wall poster containing a complete reference of SCORM 2004 3rd Edition. Including:

• The complete CMI and ADL.NAV data models with data types, syntax and descriptions.
• A road map to the sequencing pseudo code with function relationships and descriptions.
• A syntax reference for the runtime API.
• A summary of the SCORM activity tracking data model and how it relates to the CMI runtime data model. "
  

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Most common reason for not completing courses

This list comes from a Brandon Hall study among 313 learning professionals. It has the common reasons learners do not complete courses:

• learners get the information the need, then exit
• learners get interrupted or distracted
• learners are too busy
• learners don't have incentives to complete courses
• the online courses are boring or badly designed
• the technology doesn't always work right or is confusing
  

The Indians are coming

Don't panic. They are actually already here :-).
Tata systems announced a new LCMS.

"Global learning solutions provider Tata Interactive Systems (TIS) launched Learning Planet, an enterprise learning content management system (LCMS). The technology includes a core learning management system (LMS), along with tools in the areas of competency management, content management, knowledge management, collaboration and communication, and an assessment engine. "

What works: strategies for increasing elearning usage

How do you make elearning work? What can you do to promote it, and to make it more effective? According to a Corporate University Exchange study e-learning dropout rates stand at about 70% as compared with 15% for classroom. I believe 30% e-learning dropout is a common figure in corporations. The dropouts don't say whether that is because of the poor learning, because of a mismatch or because the learner found what they needed and quit. Regardless of the reason, here are 9 tips Brandon Hall gives to make e-learning work better:

1. Talk to your audience - and share the results
2. Pay attention to culture
3. Be specific in your marketing
4. Find e-learning champions
5. Get learner's managers involved
6. Brand your program
7. Don't stop with the launch; keep communicating
8. Tie e-learning to consequences
9. Give learners enough time and space to do e-learning
   

Corporate learning survey

Want to know how your corporate learning compares to that of 'the big ones' or the major players in your sector? Until August 15 companies can freely sign up for participation in the CUX 8th annual benchmarking study on corporate learning and employee development.

Later this year, at the November Online Educa conference, results will be discussed.

Diversity training

This Checkpoint article talks about the 'Respect Diversity Toolkit', a diversity training package from Aviva. Diversity training is gaining in importance. That is a positive evolution, and it is even more positive companies are sharing their experiences on the topic.

The potential of Jing

Jing is a free beta product that allows you to easily share screenshots or screencasts of your desktop and save them or share them. The makers call it 'visual conversations'. Jing is a project of TechSmith, the makers of the popular commercial snapshot product 'SnagIt', screen video product 'Camtasia' and associated hosting site 'screencast.com'. I don't expect Jing to end up as a free product, but as long as they are in beta you get a pretty good, simplified and easy tool with free hosting on screencast.com. I recommend you give it a shot.

I see a lot of potential for Jing, not at least in the field of learning. It lowers the centre of gravity for expertise because anyone can easily, just-in-time make a small tutorial on how to us a certain feature of an application or where to click, and share it. Help desk people will find this a useful tool. Coaches and remote trainers will love this. And if the makers add tags to it and a home page you get an instant YouTube for 'how-do-I-do-this' screencasts. Very cool indeed.

See full article on the about2findout.com blog.

The Learning Savings Account

Some days I'm very proud of my company IBM. Like today. IBM is announcing (at least in the US for now) a radical new way to help employees update their skills and learn new things.

Most of training budgets get spent at the beginning of a career, and then you get some days a year for incremental updates along the way but only for what you need for your own daily job. The most productive employees, and probably the employees that could leverage training the most in real life, get the least of it. But at the same time companies expect their workers to keep themselves 'employable' by updating their skill set and keeping it current. Most often, that is at the personal expense of the employee. Besides, hardly any training you get internally will prepare you for a new job aspiration or heaven forbid a career change at another company.

In today's announcement IBM will create kind of saving accounts that can be used for education and training, and adds 50% of what the employee contributes (up to 1000$ a year). It is completely controlled by the employee.

For more information read this article in the NY Times.

Thomson sells Prometric testing to ETS

Thomson last year sold its e-learning division NETg to SkillSoft. Now they have an agreement to sell the certification division Prometric to one of its major customers ETS (the one from the TOEFL test).

More on http://www.thomson.com/content/pr/corp/acquisitions_divestitures/217831 .

3D for training

Yet another tool to create 3D avatars for learning.

Vcom3D released Vcommunicator Authoring Suite and
Sign Smith Studio 3.0. The tools are designed to
provide users, regardless of computer animation or
modeling experience, the ability to quickly and
cost-effectively animate 3-D characters for training
applications.