What is SCORM-compliant?
Learning Management Systems used to be a lot harder to use. In the early days of e-learning, creating content within an LMS often resulted in an issue known as vendor lock-in. This meant you couldn’t move your content to another LMS or learning system, making it stuck.
Since then, The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative developed an e-learning standard format to combat this issue and ensure consistency across e-learning software: SCORM.
SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Material. Exporting your content as a SCORM package allows you to share it between different e-learning systems, including LMSs and authoring tools. Essentially, SCORM creates a language that allows different e-learning software to communicate with and host each other’s content.
That’s why a course that meets this standard is called SCORM-compliant.
Apart from transferring content, SCORM compliance enables you to track and trace your learners’ progress. Some insights include their quiz results, time spent on an assignment, and whether they passed or failed a course. If you’re creating a course in an authoring tool, exporting it as a SCORM package will allow you to continue tracking these insights in an LMS.
What are the technical requirements of SCORM compliance?
You can identify whether your course is SCORM–compliant by the way it’s digitally packaged. Once you’ve downloaded your course as a SCORM package, it should generate a ZIP file containing several key items, particularly:
- Imsmanifest.xml — This is an XML file that describes what’s in the ZIP and contains important data that enables an LMS to successfully deliver your course. To ensure your course is LMS-readable, this file must be at the root of your ZIP.
- Media files — There will likely be several media files containing different aspects of the course you’ve created, including font types and images.
- HTML and JavaScript files — You’ll likely also find HTML and JavaScript files that allow your content to run on a browser.
Setting up your course to be SCORM-compliant is easy. Here are the steps you should take:
- Create your course — either in an authoring tool like Easygenerator or in an LMS.
- Publish your course as a SCORM package. This will create the ZIP file of the course that you can save on your PC/laptop.
- Upload the SCORM package to your LMS and start adding learners to the course.
- Let the LMS track and store all the learners’ results.