Preparing Courses for SCORM Authoring

Preparing Courses for SCORM Authoring

by System Admin ECLC -
Number of replies: 7

Hello,

I have a question which addresses both SCORM concerns and best practices for course development.  I hope the post is appropriate for this forum.

My school is developing a Moodle (3.4) and we want to make use of SCORM modules, or at least prepare courses so they are easily converted to a SCORM module.

My question is about hosting course related media files.  What is best practice when it comes to bundling a course? 

I've done an initial setup where a course's media files are hosted externally to the Moodle, and displayed in a web page inside the course. I did this for the sake of simplicity, as I was having issues with links if they were setup in a repository. I found that repository links needed to be revisited in the course page if there was a change to the source file.  The downside to this is it's a bit cumbersome to upload the file to the server. This is done through an FTP transfer. No biggie, but a bit counter intuitive for the non-techie. All my files references in this setup work with no issue. These would be pdfs, mp3s, and mp4s.

I also tried to create a folder inside the course and had some success with this when it came to the page reflecting changes to mp3 and mp4 files, but pdfs were problematic. I prefer the course folder approach as it's far simpler to add files, but we do have pdfs that we want to make available until they're eventually converted to HTML pages.

My goal is to develop our courses to be easily convertable to SCORM modules.  Is there a preferred approach, or would either hosting approach work?  I could see how having the files hosted externally might complicate the portability of a module.

Any feedback is appreciated, and if this belongs in another forum, please let me know and I'll re-post it there.

Thanks!

Jim






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In reply to System Admin ECLC

Re: Preparing Courses for SCORM Authoring

by Shirley Gregorczyk -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

It appears that you are doing a lot of work, that may not be needed. You cannot create a SCORM content file using Moodle.

To create SCORM content, you need a SCORM publishing tool. You can upload SCORM content as a Moodle activity.


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In reply to Shirley Gregorczyk

Re: Preparing Courses for SCORM Authoring

by System Admin ECLC -

Hi Shirley, 

Thanks for responding. I think a light went on after posting this.  I now understand that SCORM objects are encapsulated, so any media files would be bundled with the module. This will greatly simplify authoring our courses. We're looking into SCORM authoring software now.

I work for a private language college and we're setting up our courses in Moodle.  We're developing a number of courses and I want to be sure we're approaching this in the most portable way.  At the same time we have media files that need to be accessible, so I'm wondering how best to do that. We know we want to meet SCORM compliancy, we're figuring out how best to do that for the school's curriculum. 

I think my answer is to host the files, setup a quick page for simple access. We can then focus on developing SCORM modules which will be imported into the course and replace the temporary course pages. I've found notepad++ helpful in dealing with repetitive html tags, so there's a certain amount of automation in preparing the Moodle course pages once the files have been uploaded to the server.


Cheers again!

Jim
East Coast Language College


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In reply to System Admin ECLC

Re: Preparing Courses for SCORM Authoring

by Floyd Saner -

Jim,

There are quite a few content development tools that will wrap modules in SCORM - Captivate, Lectora, Camtasia, Storyline, etc. Do some research on capabilities if you want to embed external media in the SCORM package. I work with Camtasia and Storyline.  Storyline will let you embed external media in the module, but Camtasia does not.  With Camtasia the media file has to be inside the module.

Floyd

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Preparing Courses for SCORM Authoring

by System Admin ECLC -

Thanks, Floyd. I'll look those over. 

I'm looking into eXe, Jetdraft's Document Suite. We're hoping to keep costs down on this, so if we can make use of a freeware tool that'd be best.  I appreciate an academic license might get us a more advanced, time saving software tool in the end, though.

I'm leaning towards full encapsulation for simplicity sake. If I can create a module containing modules, that would be best. The whole point of modularization, really.

 Cheers for taking the time to respond!

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In reply to System Admin ECLC

Re: Preparing Courses for SCORM Authoring

by Mathew Gancarz -
Picture of Core developers

Take a look at the free H5P tools:

https://h5p.org/presentation

or

https://h5p.org/column

You'll need the H5P plugin for Moodle: https://moodle.org/plugins/mod_hvp but they can also be run through a Wordpress or Drupal site.


SCORM's encapsulation is great for being able to send courses easily to classic/traditional corporate learning systems that only can really play SCORM, but going forward it is definitely less future-proof. If you are planning for a 5-10 year timeframe, I would look more at those new tools if you are starting from scratch.

There's also an H5P object being developed that you can display a SCORM with interestingly.. see https://h5p.org/blog/march-2017-release-note#SCORM 

The two biggest advantages with SCORM is the authoring environment, which you have to pay licenses for to get any real value out of (Articulate/Trivantis) and the portability to copy it over to old LMSes.

The disadvantages are the software itself and the learning curve to use the software.. You could probably pretty easily and quickly train anyone to make edits in and add content to an H5P or a Moodle Lesson. The interface is just a webpage. For SCORM files, you have to have the right program installed, make sure you are editing the right version of the module and you need to know how to use the software to edit it.

If you expect to have a dedicated elearning development team, or just develop the modules once and never touch them again (if your content rarely changes) then SCORM may work fine for you. If you expect to have it distributed across many people that do a little bit occasionally or that need to make periodic updates/tweaks, then I would avoid SCORM.

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In reply to System Admin ECLC

Re: Preparing Courses for SCORM Authoring

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

but - word of warning....

SCORM is an old standard - created before Mobile learning/modern browsers/widespread wifi availability and is fragile and easy for users to completely skip the SCORM package and use web browser tools to make it look like they have completed the SCORM and got 100%. It can also be very time consuming to develop packages that play nicely on all devices.

It can also be quite costly to develop in compared with other tools like the Lesson module in Moodle - if you are wanting to develop stand-alone learning packages without relying on your LMS (Moodle) you might consider using something else other than scorm like H5P or other html5 content authoring tools.

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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Preparing Courses for SCORM Authoring

by System Admin ECLC -

Hi Dan, 

I really appreciate this heads up.

I'll look into the options you mentioned.

Cheers!

Jim

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