Hi everyone,
I'm currently developing an inhouse LMS for my company. I need to make it SCORM compatible. I'm looking at using moodle as a solution, however I will also consider 'plugging-in' SCORM compatibility into the existing LMS. It seems that SCORM compliant system is quite complicated to develop from scratch. I want to know if it is possible to extract SCORM module from Moodle, can it be done? Or is it integrated into the moodle framework very deep down?
Thanks,
Mike.
Hi Mike,
if you are administrator of the site, you can go to:
Site Administration -> Modules -> Activities -> Manage activities
and there you can Hide the SCORM module for the site.
Bye.
if you are administrator of the site, you can go to:
Site Administration -> Modules -> Activities -> Manage activities
and there you can Hide the SCORM module for the site.
Bye.
Antonio, thanks for your reply. But I don't want to hide SCORM module. I want to extract the code and files so I can reuse them in another web application, if that makes sense?
Hi Mike,
Theoretically, the answer to your question should be yes since Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. You'll find the SCORM module in: moodle/mod/scorm/, although it's most probably written to interact with Moodle's API. I'm not a Moodle or PHP developer so I'm afraid I can't help you any more than that.
Moodle's code documentation might be of some use to you: http://xref.moodle.org/nav.html?index.html
Good luck!
Matt
BTW, what are you using SCORM for? - I'm involved in a project to develop a new activity module for Moodle that'll make deploying any Flash and Flex learning interactions and recording user interaction data fast, efficient and simple, and knowing what people want to use SCORM for, currently the only way to deploy Flash, would be a great help.
Theoretically, the answer to your question should be yes since Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. You'll find the SCORM module in: moodle/mod/scorm/, although it's most probably written to interact with Moodle's API. I'm not a Moodle or PHP developer so I'm afraid I can't help you any more than that.
Moodle's code documentation might be of some use to you: http://xref.moodle.org/nav.html?index.html
Good luck!
Matt
BTW, what are you using SCORM for? - I'm involved in a project to develop a new activity module for Moodle that'll make deploying any Flash and Flex learning interactions and recording user interaction data fast, efficient and simple, and knowing what people want to use SCORM for, currently the only way to deploy Flash, would be a great help.
Thanks for your reply. As far as I know, SCORM is an official standard (but not enforced) for packaging courseware. Most LMS's support SCORM so this allows courseware to be easily imported in an LMS. I am by no means an expert on SCORM, which is why I am reluctant to develop the module for my application from scratch - there is more information on SCORM here - http://www.adlnet.gov/scorm .
I haven't looked at the SCORM module but my impression is that it does not work all that well or isn't maintained up to the latest versions or something. Not sure if this is current information or not...
(Given that the SCORM 'standard' is, in my view, utterly worthless, and the concept of learning objects is little better, I don't see this is a big problem. But views may differ, especially among buzzword-compliant folks.)
In general I would recommend writing code from scratch rather than basing work for another system on Moodle's code. Certainly there is no chance of a Moodle module working 'out of the box' on any other system. You might be able to use chunks of the code - maybe even large chunks - as a basis or a kind of reference for your own programming work if you rip out the Moodle-specific stuff, but don't expect it to be an easy job. (Especially as you'll need to somehow add back in the '-specific' stuff for your other system that you're porting to...)
Just my opinion.
--sam
(Given that the SCORM 'standard' is, in my view, utterly worthless, and the concept of learning objects is little better, I don't see this is a big problem. But views may differ, especially among buzzword-compliant folks.)
In general I would recommend writing code from scratch rather than basing work for another system on Moodle's code. Certainly there is no chance of a Moodle module working 'out of the box' on any other system. You might be able to use chunks of the code - maybe even large chunks - as a basis or a kind of reference for your own programming work if you rip out the Moodle-specific stuff, but don't expect it to be an easy job. (Especially as you'll need to somehow add back in the '-specific' stuff for your other system that you're porting to...)
Just my opinion.
--sam
I see. I was hoping the moodle's SCORM module fits in to the system in such a way that I can use it in another web application 'out of the box' as you quite rightly put it. I do not mind modifying and tweaking the module to make it work with my app (I would expect to do this with pretty much any open source extension/module anyway) however since I am very new to moodle, I am not sure about the structure of modules, and how they interact with the rest of the system. Is there any documentation or illustration around that can help me understand how the modules fit into the architecture and how the "API's" interact?
As of developing a SCORM module from scratch.. my knowledge about SCORM is minimal.. so I do not want to open a can of worms
As of developing a SCORM module from scratch.. my knowledge about SCORM is minimal.. so I do not want to open a can of worms
One good thing in this situation is that Moodle is quite 'lightweight' i.e. modules mostly run as standalone PHP files, so that it might be possible to pick bits out without too much effort - but that won't help you if the target application you're porting to is 'heavyweight'...
This may be a bit of an obvious first step so apologies if you're way past this, but have you verified that the Moodle SCORM module successfully handles some of the files that you want to import, and works in a way you're happy with?
--sam
This may be a bit of an obvious first step so apologies if you're way past this, but have you verified that the Moodle SCORM module successfully handles some of the files that you want to import, and works in a way you're happy with?
--sam
> I haven't looked at the SCORM module but my impression is that it does not work all that well or isn't maintained up to the latest versions or something. Not sure if this is current information or not...
Recently Dan Marsden and Piers Harding have been doing lots of work on the scorm module, so I do not think this is currently the case
(edit: doh, realised Dan has already comented)
Developing an LMS 'from scratch' is a multi-million dollar project/multi-year project, as there are a number of good open source LMSs out there, that seems a bit of wheel-re-invention to me.
Why not remove the logos from Moodle, call it BanksLMS or something, put your company logo all over it, do a new theme and use Moodle - then no need to remove the SCORM module & and maybe you'll develop some nice things that you could contribute back to the Moodle community?
Since this is all for an in house project and not for re-distribution or re-sale, why write 10s of thousands of lines of code that you don't have to?
Another way to do this would be to remove all the modules other than SCORM and Forum (the module that cannot be removed) from Moodle, then set up Moodle for the SCORMs and do a SSO and reporting service between the two - then you load the SCORMs into Moodle and present them in your app in an iFrame or somesuch - again, no need to re-write or try to extract the code.
Why not remove the logos from Moodle, call it BanksLMS or something, put your company logo all over it, do a new theme and use Moodle - then no need to remove the SCORM module & and maybe you'll develop some nice things that you could contribute back to the Moodle community?
Since this is all for an in house project and not for re-distribution or re-sale, why write 10s of thousands of lines of code that you don't have to?
Another way to do this would be to remove all the modules other than SCORM and Forum (the module that cannot be removed) from Moodle, then set up Moodle for the SCORMs and do a SSO and reporting service between the two - then you load the SCORMs into Moodle and present them in your app in an iFrame or somesuch - again, no need to re-write or try to extract the code.
Oh, those are good suggestions! (kicking self for not thinking of, etc).
Incidentally, depending on how specific your requirements are, using Moodle rather than developing your own learning environment from scratch could also turn out to be a 'multi-million dollar project/multi-year project'...
[That's just a general comment... not advice for this particular case!]
--sam
Incidentally, depending on how specific your requirements are, using Moodle rather than developing your own learning environment from scratch could also turn out to be a 'multi-million dollar project/multi-year project'...
[That's just a general comment... not advice for this particular case!]
--sam
yeah - Michael's suggestions sound the best! - you can't easily "extract" the SCORM module by itself as it uses a lot of the internal moodle functions. but you could relatively easily trim back the header/footers and do some smoke & mirror stuff to make it look like the same system using SSO etc.
btw - Sam, the SCORM module has improved dramatically over the past 6 months! - Moodle 1.8stable and 1.9stable pass all Scorm 1.2 Compliance tests, and we plan to get "Official Certification" for 1.9.3 soon after it is released.
Scorm 2004 compliance is still a long way off, specifically navigation and sequencing, but it will play some objects that don't make use of the more complex areas of SCORM 2004
btw - Sam, the SCORM module has improved dramatically over the past 6 months!
Scorm 2004 compliance is still a long way off, specifically navigation and sequencing, but it will play some objects that don't make use of the more complex areas of SCORM 2004
(Re Scorm 1.2 compliance)
Great - sorry for doubting.
--sam
Great - sorry for doubting.
--sam