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.