SCORM 2004 and Moodle 1.9.3

SCORM 2004 and Moodle 1.9.3

by Mary Cooch -
Number of replies: 9
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Probably a question along the lines of  "how long is a piece of string" but- I have got some professionally produced SCORM 2004 packages that I am about to upload toMoodle 1.9.3 and my question is: I read that SCORM 2004 is partly supported - so -will they work or not? What does "partly" mean? If I upload one to try will I know immediately if it works or not so as to avoid unnecessarily uploading all the others?

Thanks!

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: SCORM 2004 and Moodle 1.9.3

by Dan Marsden -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Plugins guardians Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
ok - Partly means that there are 100+ tests for SCORM 2004 compliance... Moodle currently passes 2 of those (or did last time Piers ran them)...

the biggest component missing is around the sequencing and navigation so if your SCORM uses any of these new features of 2004 it probably won't function that well..

there's also a range of SCORM 2004 related bugs currently open in the tracker - see:
http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL/component/10080

We really need someone to be annoyed enough about this to help with some funding! smile
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: SCORM 2004 and Moodle 1.9.3

by David McAll -

Dan,

We are probably  the company menioned above. We are distributing 80+ SCORM 2004 Maths packs to hundreds of UK schools who love Moodle across the UK. We are certainly prepared to use some of the income we get to push forward SCORM on Moodle - whether it helps us directly or not. How do we contribute???

Our own packs work fine at the moment (as they do on Kaleidos, Sharepoint, StudyWiz, Fronter etc). There is one small thing which is to do with accurately picking up the simple runtime data that our packs, all in the same forma, put out. I began a conversation with Piers about this by email, but now I have seen this forum.

You can see sample packs for download at 
http://www.sums.co.uk/scorm.htm

Our packs are simple Flash games, properly packaged for SCORM 2004.

SCORM is very important to the schools. They may be forced to move platforms at a later date, so they need commercial content to be completely portable.

Best wishes,

David
SUMS Online Ltd
www.sums.co.uk
+44 (0)1454 853539

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In reply to David McAll

Re: SCORM 2004 and Moodle 1.9.3

by Dan Marsden -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Plugins guardians Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi David,

thanks for the offer of help! - we're currently looking for someone (or a group of people) to help fund an initial 3 months worth of work on SCORM 2004 - (see my recent blog post here: http://danmarsden.com/blog/2009/05/23/scorm-2004-in-moodle/ ) - if this is something you might be able to help out with - let Piers or myself know!

It's also good to see links for your samples in our SCORM Repository here! http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?id=7198
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: SCORM 2004 and Moodle 1.9.3

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi David smile Yes you WERE the company mentioned above and yes your SCORM products DO work fine on Moodle smile and I'm saying so officially here!
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: SCORM 2004 and Moodle 1.9.3

by David McAll -
Hi Dan,
Good to hear from you. Can you please let me know.
 
a) What an initial 3 months work costs in dollars or pounds.
 
b) How we make donations that are directed towards that work.
 
I'd like to put in £ 250 (UK pounds) now so that we can start to understand the process. Then we can look at strategy, including donating every time we make a Moodle related sale.
 
In the short term, one priority for us is accurate recording of passed runtime data. A lot of people, like us, have SCORM packs that consists of a single Flash file or equivalent, where sequencing is not the issue. The reason for this is UK school market demand - teachers wanted us to disaggregate our content so that they could build their own courses around it. Originally we had a single SCORM pack with 90 or so activities within in - the teachers soon told us to break it apart. The process is being repeated for suppliers across UK education which is servicing Learning Platforms in use in 20,000 schools, so expect to see a lot of disaggregation..
 
Note that we have kept updating the downloads on our own site at the following link, but not the links at the Moodle SCORM depository, so for the latest versions if testing best to use:
 
Thanks for the good work so far on SCORM in Moodle. Regards,
David
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In reply to David McAll

Re: SCORM 2004 and Moodle 1.9.3

by Dan Marsden -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Plugins guardians Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi David,

Thanks for the offer of funding! - I'll contact you privately about our charging rates.

To get this started, I think we really need someone to commit to funding a big chunk of the work - at least a month. - then others could come on board and fund a week or 2 until we get our 3 months worth of initial funding.

but - if users have specific issues around things like "accurate recording of passed runtime data" - then feel free to open another SCORM 2004 bug in the tracker and then bounce me an e-mail for a quote to get it fixed!
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: SCORM 2004 and Moodle 1.9.3

by David McAll -

Dan,

I have contacted Andrew off forum about working together to give you a spec for fixing the specific SCORM 2004 runtime scoring bug. As you suggested, once we have a spec, and a quote from you, we can hopefully find the funding.

I am already getting pressure from schools who want to keep records of student scores.

Best wishes,

David

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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: SCORM 2004 and Moodle 1.9.3

by Andrew Field -
I would also be happy to help finanically support the development of SCORM in Moodle.

I've got my free and pay-for ContentGenerator.net programs which I have spent a considerable amount of time adding SCORM functionality to.

My programs generate single Flash (.swf) files so I'm after similar functionality to David above. Moodle clearly tracks the final score - which works well - but other tracking data (such as timing and further details) don't.

I will continue to make my free programs fully available (aside from registering on my forum at http://www.contentgenerator.net/forum ) but I am keen to help ensure that SCORM support continues to improve within Moodle.

I'll e-mail you directly Dan.

Andrew Field
ContentGenerator.net
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