Category Archives: Development

Getting to Know Project Tin Can (Next Generation SCORM)

Posted on by Judy Unrein
5

This is a mondo post.

Yesterday’s post from the ADL announcing a kickoff webinar for Next Generation SCORM (aka Project Tin Can) reminded me that I’ve been wanting to get a better feel for how this emerging standard works, so I spent a bit of time playing with the prototypes that I learned about at DevLearn 2011 (yeah, I know… procrastination what?).

This has been a really interesting idea to me since I first started hearing about it last year; I’ve done a couple of projects in which I wanted to track and report on much more than completion and score (including my M.Ed. capstone project) and in previous versions of SCORM, I had to sort through a lot of suspend data to get what I needed. If Tin Can can easily report granular enough information to serve a research project, it’s interesting to think of what other learner stories it could help you tell.

You can make your own prototypes at scorm.com, and while I haven’t taken that step yet, I thought it would be interesting to look at the data generated in my capstone project and compare that to what output would look like in Tin Can.

A little background: I built two versions of a course with one slight difference, and I built in some variable storage on the back end so that I could go back and look at how much the learners explored within each version of the course. (In other words, I had Lectora add data to a variable string for each time a link was accessed and each time a page was loaded, then had it retain variables so that all of that would be saved in the suspend data.)

This is the suspend data for one learner/tester using SCORM 1.2…

VarResourcesUsed=*P01*P02*P03*P18*P20*P18*P04*P05*P27*P06*P07*P08*P09*L35
*P10*L37*P11*P12*P31*P32*P14*P33;VarS01=Strongly%20Agree;VarS03=Strongly%
20Agree;VarS02=Strongly%20Agree;VarQ05=YouTube;VarQ04=To%20create%20a%20s
trong%2C%20memorable%20impression;VarQ03=LinkedIn;VarQ02=Join%20only%20as
%20many%20networks%20and%20groups%20as%20you%20have%20time%20to%20contrib
ute%20to%20well.;VarQ01=Mention%20how%20you%20met%20or%20rewrite%20the%20
message%20to%20personalize%20it%20in%20some%20way.;VarD105=I%20prefer%20n
ot%20to%20say;VarD104=Some%20college%20or%20Associate%27s%20degree;VarD10
3=White;VarD102=18-25;VarD101=Female;VarCourseVersion=1;

…and this is what that same activity would look like using Tin Can:

{time/date} Amy selected “Strongly Agree” for Survey Question 01
{time/date} Amy selected “Strongly Agree” for Survey Question 03
{time/date} Amy selected “Strongly Agree” for Survey Question 02
{time/date} Amy selected “YouTube” for Quiz Question 05
{time/date} Amy selected “To create a strong, memorable impression” for Quiz Question 04
{time/date} Amy selected “LinkedIn” for Quiz Question 03
{time/date} Amy selected “Join only as many networks and groups as you have time to contribute to well.” for Quiz Question 02
{time/date} Amy selected “Mention how you met or rewrite the message to personalize it in some way.” for Quiz Question 01
{time/date} Amy loaded page 33
{time/date} Amy loaded page 14
{time/date} Amy loaded page 32
{time/date} Amy loaded page 31
{time/date} Amy loaded page 12
{time/date} Amy loaded page 11
{time/date} Amy accessed link 35
{time/date} Amy loaded page 10
{time/date} Amy accessed link 35
{time/date} Amy loaded page 09
{time/date} Amy loaded page 08
{time/date} Amy loaded page 07
{time/date} Amy loaded page 06
{time/date} Amy loaded page 27
{time/date} Amy loaded page 05
{time/date} Amy loaded page 04
{time/date} Amy loaded page 18
{time/date} Amy loaded page 20
{time/date} Amy loaded page 18
{time/date} Amy loaded page 03
{time/date} Amy loaded page 02
{time/date} Amy loaded page 01
{time/date} Amy selected “I prefer not to say” for Demographic Question 05
{time/date} Amy selected “Some college or Associate's degree” for Demographic Question 04
{time/date} Amy selected “White” for Demographic Question 03
{time/date} Amy selected “18-25” for Demographic Question 02
{time/date} Amy selected “Female” for Demographic Question 01
{time/date} Amy started Course Version 1

Obviously it’s much cleaner, but the primary benefit in terms of data analysis is that all of the activities are discreet items that can be collected and analyzed. So it seems to be both more human-readable and more machine-readable.

Also, storing all of this in the suspend data isn’t exactly a best practice in elearning development, so while suspend data can be used to report on interactions, your LMS database may not actually be built to store that much data. I have to imagine that storage that accommodates Tin Can records would have to be more robust (indeed, that’s listed as a weakness on scorm.com), but at the same time, wouldn’t it be an advantage to plan/build for what you want to use?

If you’re yet not familiar with Tin Can and want to learn more, I recommend starting with scorm.com’s overview, capabilities list, and weaknesses list. And of course, there’s the webinar linked above, which will take place on April 5th. Also, this is probably the first post of many as I continue to learn about this topic; feel free to jump in with questions, comments, and ideas, and other resources, and maybe we can get some of the leaders on this project to respond, too.

Update: I really should be referring to the technology as the Tin Can API now, rather than Project Tin Can. 

Duarte’s Diagrammer

Posted on by Judy Unrein
6

Diagrammer is a collection of 4,000 diagrams for 99 cents each, recently released by Duarte Design. You may recognize the name because of their work with Apple, Al Gore, and TED, or because Nancy Duarte keynoted Learning Solutions 2011, or because her books, Slide:ology and Resonate, have been hugely popular in our field lately.

The diagrams are based on a revision of the taxonomy from Slide:ology, and they’re categorized as flows, joins, networks, segments, and stacks. Each is available as a downloadable and fully customizable PPT; change sizes, colors, text, etc. at will. Best uses: inspiration on representing data and information, and speed up graphic development.

I’m not a big fan of templates, but I love ones that save development time without locking you into a certain look, feel, or interaction. These definitely qualify.

onehundredfortywords readers can use the code 3forfree for 3 free diagrams. Enjoy!

My #LSCON Sessions: Creating HTML5-Friendly Multimedia

Posted on by Judy Unrein
4

The first session I gave at Learning Solutions was on tools for creating HTML5-Friendly Multimedia. I started with a few inspirational — maybe aspirational — examples: websites that don’t use encapsulated multimedia and yet are all, in their own ways, stunning experiences. Here they are:

The Wilderness Downtown
All Is Not Lost
Nike Better World
MTA.me (And I think I forgot to mention that you can also “play” the routes by clicking or plucking!)

After a brief overview of some of the challenges facing those working on HTML5 delivery, we talked about some of the best tools you can use to deliver web-standard multimedia. As promised, I’m posting the links here.

One of the questions asked was how to learn more about HTML5. I’m putting together a permanent page on this site to answer that question and more; stay tuned!

Update: Here’s that permanent page on HTML5 resources that I promised.

Update: Thanks to all who blogged and tweeted this session, including Kelly Meeker of Open Sesame and Sumeet Moghle, The Learning Generalist. You guys make me blush.

#lscon 2012: Q&A from the eLearning Foundations Intensive

Posted on by Judy Unrein
2

Greetings from sunny Orlando! I’m at the eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions Conference and Foundations Intensive this week. Yesterday I had the pleasure of talking with about twenty participants through the Foundations table talk on the pros and cons of rapid authoring tools. The main message I’ve wanted people to walk away with is that tools are important, but only so far as they serve a design (which, in turn, serves an analysis of a business need). So choose tools that are both powerful and easy to use!

A few Q&As from the table:

Q: I have legacy content that was created in Articulate Studio. What’s the easiest way to publish it for tablets?
A: Wait for Storyline to come out; convert and re-publish your content. Also, see this Rapid eLearning Blog post.

Q: Most of the elearning in my company is created by SMEs. How do I prove the importance of the designer?
A: Continue to sell what you do through great work and don’t expect change overnight. Let your org get tired of boring, inconsistent content dumps and be prepared and ready for them to come to you for solutions. Celebrate great designs regardless of who makes them. Help SMEs solve the easier challenges through style guides, templates, etc. Quit for a job at a company that places due value in what you do. There is no one right answer here (except for the first one); this is an organizational issue and any combination of the above may be right for you and your org.

Q: Will you just tell me which tool to buy?
A: Nope. But I only consider tools that have certain features; I’ll tell you more about that — and why — on Thursday!

Thanks to all participants for sharing your stories and helping each other!

New Features Released in Claro

Posted on by Judy Unrein
2

A few weeks ago, dominKnow announced that new features have been added to Claro. I haven’t gotten my hands into it much yet, but from what the guys at dominKnow showed me at DevLearn and after, it seems like it’s been in very active development since I did the overview in T+D earlier this year.  Here are some of the highlights:

  • Linking to other pages within the course. This is a huge step up in interactivity because it enables branching. Woot!
  • Interaction templates. Think Engage/Quizmaker-type interactions and other common types. You can also create your own.
  • Characters and clipart. They’ve licensed eLearning Brothers and other clipart packages to provide a variety of characters, clothes, and poses, as well as general clipart. I really like the design of the “People Browser”; they’ve put a lot of thought into the usability of it, particularly the filters that remember your choices on a course level so that it’s easy to come back and choose a different pose of the same character you’re using.
  • New, extensive template library.
  • Tables and shapes. Just what they sound like.
  • Various usability additions such as find/replace, new keyboard shortcuts, a color picker, and the ability to change formatting on lists.
  • Easy reviewing on a mobile device. I think you’ve always been able to email a link to a course for review, but now you can also pop up a QR code, point your device at the screen, and review. Just like that.
  • Ability to copy and paste pages between mobile and regular versions of a course.

Other enhancements since the review include publishing to SCORM Cloud and, most impressively, a much more developed separation of the content layer from the navigation and visuals. If you aren’t familiar with it, so I’m going to suffice it to say (for now) that if you have content that resides in several courses, it’s possible — and easy — to update it once and have those changes reflected in multiple places.

All in all, this software is becoming more and more interesting to me. It still lacks variables and highly customizable actions, but for people who want easy, usable, reviewable online, and HTML5 publishing, I like how it’s shaping up.

Update: An earlier version of this post stated that Claro included an eLearning Art package instead of eLearning Brothers. Thanks, dominKnow, for notifying me of the error!