Forced Labor for 64 in Pensacola

The SCORM 2.0 Requirements Gathering Workshop in Pensacola was attended by 64 SCORM enthusiasts from business, government, and academia. Representatives came from the US, Canada, Japan, German, the UK, Singapore and Korea. After a half-day plenary discussion on Wednesday morning, the groups broke into four tracks to deliberate four major themes from the White Papers that had been received over the summer: use cases for LET 2.0, sequencing, software architecture, and business requirements. Summaries of each of the four tracks were presented at a closing plenary on Friday morning. These presentations, along with session minutes and videos of the plenaries are being posted on the wiki.

Several major topics from the White Papers were not discussed during this meeting. Future meetings are being planned to address these issues, including content aggregation, formats and life-cycle management. Additionally, meetings in different geographies and in specific communites of practice (Learning 2008, SIFA, ADL, ...) are being planned. The hope is that the outcome of this meeting will help drive requirements gathering in later meetings.

Over 100 SCORM 2.0 White Papers submitted

LETSI received 99 white papers from all over the world on topics that range from SCORM's content aggregation scheme to the use of games, simulations and other immersive learning environments. We have also been posting the informal comments that have been sent to scorm2@letsi.org. And we've tried to accumulate links to the relevant conversations in the blogsphere.

Over the last two months, the submissions generated dozens of discussion threads here on the wiki. The 57-person Program Committee will be facilitating these discussions and prepared the agenda for the SCORM 2.0 Workshop in Pensacola, October 15-17.

SCORM 2.0 Workshop

The Workshop Program includes 4 parallel working group tracks:

1. LET 2.0 deals with how teachers and ISDs envision using technology. SCORM 2.0 must allow all the stuff that teachers and publishers create in one system to be used in other systems, or most of it anyway. And in coming years teachers will want to use wiki's, blogs, google, hosted learning activities, immersive team training scenarios, etc.
2. Content deals with what learning-related information must be exchanged between LMS, LCMS, authoring tools, and other systems, like HR. In this category of requirements, sequencing is particularly problematic, because it is the way we exchange the logic of the instructional design across systems. Content formats, aggregation standards, and life-cycle management also involve the
3. Architecture deals with how modern, web-based software applications are constructed. SCORM 2004 was designed before modern web software techniques were adopted. No matter what learning information needs to be exchanged, the way the software applications are built will be different in SCORM 2.0. A set of web service definitions and an open source software community, for example, might be requirements for SCORM 2.0.
4. Business Realities addresses SCORM 2.0 requirements from the business side, like backwards compatibility and migration, community variations, open standards, certification to distinguish conformant products, content management, re-use, online catalogues of learning materials, change control board, etc. These are not pedagogical requirements and they are not technical, but they will also determine the market's reaction to SCORM 2.0.

As described in the Working Group Instructions, each group has specific deliverables. Each track will start off with one issue from the white papers and proceed on to others when the first deliverables are completed. The Workshop will focus on WHAT SCORM 2.0 needs to be, rather than HOW that functionality will be implemented.

After the Workshop

LETSI is delighted with the community's response to the SCORM 2.0 effort so far: the White Papers, discussion threads, and Workshop, which sold out a month in advance, show real interest in LETSI's vision of a new, modern SCORM based on open software standards. After the Workshop, LETSI's Technical Roadmap Working Group will be responsible for deciding on next steps and producing a description of SCORM 2.0. Please contact info@letsi.org if you are interested in participating.

We invite the community to continue to participate in the SCORM 2.0 process. Please fully in these open discussions. The links will guide you to the relevant material on the wiki:

• Submitted White Papers
• Informal Submissions Section
• Indexed list by topic.
• Relevant discussions in the blogsphere
• The SCORM 2.0 Program Committee
• The October Workshop
• An FAQ about the LETSI and the SCORM 2.0 process
• Background material, including the white paper solicitation and the SCORM 2.0 project plan.

SCORM 2.0 - Challenges and Objectives

SCORM 2.0 is intended to be an interoperability model that, like its predecessor, can be used strategically across market sectors and geographical regions. The following overarching criteria for SCORM 2.0 have been identified:

• Support existing and emerging technologies and architectures and encourage innovation in applications across the LET life cycle: authoring and ISD, learning management, content management, knowledge management, HR systems, mobile delivery, Web 2.0, service-oriented architecture, and hosted learning activities.
• Support multiple learning paradigms and teaching methods, e.g., immersive learning environments, informal learning, community-based learning, blended learning, and collaborative learning.
• Support multiple training and education contexts, e.g., classroom, distance learning, on-the-job performance support, and individual self-study.
• Incorporate a modular and extensible software architecture to provide communities of practice maximum flexibility to profile and experiment.
• Allow convenient migration strategies to preserve existing investments in systems and learning materials.
• Include specifications and standards created and managed using open, transparent processes that are not encumbered by patents, licenses or restrictions that would impinge on its availability to the global LET community. LETSI will create an open source software community to support SCORM adopters and product developers.