Design/Develop: Role-based sequencing (SCORM 2004)

We are in the process of converting a course to SCORM 2004, and we need to come up with a navigation scheme that mimics our current nav scheme.

It's very simple. We have two kinds of user - sequential and nonsequential.

A sequential user completes units in order - A, B, C, D. Unit B is not available until unit A is completed.

A nonsequential user has the choice to execute any learning unit in any order. They make the choice by selecting the unit from the TOC.

It looks to me like SCORM 2004 S&N can easily support either sequential or nonsequential navigation. (It seems pretty straightforward.) But I don't see any way to support BOTH nagivation modes on the same SCOs, based on a property of the user (i.e. whether the user is configured as a sequential user or a nonsequential user).

Anybody have some experience or insight that might apply?

Thanks,

Dan Young, Austin, Texas.

Dan, don't know if this helps you but I've been able to use Actionscripting to build a 'sort-of' sequencing-type navigation for one of my courses. I've yet to get into the meat and potatoes of SCORM 2004, so I had to do a bit 'sequencing' in 1.2 for a customer.

My TOC has a Tutorial and 4 lessons. Now, each lesson has a pretest that must be completed before activating any of the 3-5 subtopics and the subtopics must be reviewed to activate the Knowledge Review (KR).

The user launches a lesson, the actionscript/variable runs to determine if the s/he has completed the Pretest or not. If not, the pretest is seen; if s/he HAS completed the Pretest, the timeline jumps to the lessons content page w/ the first topic active. There's variables after each subtopic to tell the LMS which topics have been completed (activating the next topic). When all topics are reviewed, the KR is activated.

Let me know if you think this might help and I'll follow up with script/examples. Otherwise, tell me how much of your time I wasted.

God bless!

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Dan,

You may be able to acomplish your goal by creating several organizations within your courses manifest. You would be able to use the resources that you have created within your course within organization 2 & 3. Essentially your course would work in the following manor:

Organization 1:

Allows the user to complete some sort of assesment that will determine the navigation model that they will recieve or simply allows them to choose on thier own.

Organization 2:

Could provide the course layout using sequencing to restrict a user to linear progression.

Organization 3:

Could allow choice navigation enabling the learner to choose thier progression through the course.

Regards,

Jacob

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Hi Jacob,

Thanks for your thoughts - this is really helpful. I went poking around in the SCORM 2004 Sequencing & Navigation PDF with your idea in mind. I think I see that it is possible to define multiple content organizations for the same course (I didn't see that explicitly, but it seems to be implied). But I really don't understand how the LMS decides which content organization to launch when the course starts up. When there is only one content organization, it's obvious, but I'm in the dark about multiple orgs.

best,

Dan

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Dan,

In the SCORM Content Packaging Book this issue is addressed in section 3.3.2.1 Multiple Content Organizations on page CAM-3-8 of the book and 34 of the pdf.

Excerpt from SCORM 2004 3rd Edition content Packaging Book

Later in the book on page CAM-3-26 page 52 of the pdf the organizations element is defined. This element has a mandatory attributed "default" which defines the default organization to deliver. How an LMS implements this bevahior is somewhat unclear. There is a post from a little while back over at the adlnet forums related to this issue. http://adlnet.gov/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=11&threadid=1795&highlight_key=y&keyword1=multiple%20AND%20organization. I will send this question around and see if i can get additional input for you.

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Dan, it's probably a good idea to check with your customer first to see how multiple organizations are supported by their LMS. Most LMS vendors will only display the organization specified as the "default" in the manfiest since SCORM is silent on how multiple organizations should be implemented and it may vary significantly depending on the LMS (e.g. would the content administrator might have to choose which organization to provide for the learner -or- would the learner be able to choose the organization).

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Hi Jason -

Great point; thanks for making that clear. The LMS we are primarily considering is Outstart Evolution (for the Navy's ILE/NKO)... so you're actually pretty familiar with the customer in question. I'll be in Florida for Evolution training in a couple of weeks, and I'll ask about how it handles multiple content organizations.

But the bigger picture seems to be that though in theory you can put multiple content organizations into a course, the pragmatics of USING the additional organizations are LMS-dependent. We want to steer away from that if possible, because potentially, we'll be delivering this course under multiple LMSs - on ILE/NKO, but also on a self-contained LAN aboard ships (not ISLE - something different).

More and more, I am getting the idea that the only SCORM solutions are (1) to publish the same course twice, in sequential and non-sequential versions, or (2) to start the course with an "assessment" that says "Will you be navigating sequentially or non-sequentially?"

Both options seem equally undesirable. But we have a Navy requirement to offer the course in these two navigation formats. So I guess it is time to go to the customer with the bad news and see what they want to do about it.

Thanks for your help!

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Hi Jacob,

Thanks for the info, and thanks especially for your offer to take this around and see what other people think. I'd be very interested if anyone has an idea of how to implement this, or even something approximating it.

This is a live issue for us, with a potentially significant impact, since we have a contract requirement to deliver this functionality (from requirements developed before SCORM came on the scene, of course).

All the best,

Dan

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Dan - one thing that we've seen people do is this:
take your current course (with activities A, B, C, D, and duplicate it. So that you have a course with two main activities:
Sequential-activity
- A
- B
- C
- D
Choice-activity
- A
- B
- C
- D

Be sure to:
1) point the two A's to the same resource, etc. (so you don't have to duplicate the SCOs in your content package);
2) write the sequential rules for the sequential activity and the open-choice rules for the choice activity

And then here's the key part:
Put a SCO as the very first activity (before the Sequential-activity) with a question that determines if the user is sequential or choice. Then use that answer to skip either the Sequential-activity or the Choice-activity to get your desired behavior.

One place to see this in action is in LSAL Template 9. The guide version is here:
http://lsal.org/lsal/expertise/projects/developersguide/
and the actual implementation (sample manifest) is available in Reload:
http://www.jointadlcolab.org/support/design_and_development/reload/
or you can grab the (updated) sample manifests here:
http://www.jointadlcolab.org/research/2005/assessments/LSAL_templates.zip

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Hi Bill,

Thanks for the help. We've tested this option, and we know that it works. The key, though, would be getting our customer to buy off on it, because it is a significant change from their current requirement.

Currently, it is the instructor who determines whether a student will be sequential (linear) or nonsequential (choice). Our customer doesn't want to put that decision in the student's hands. With our currrent (non-SCORM) LMS, there is a flag in the user data that determines whether the student may take the course non-sequentially, and only the instructor may set or change it (it defaults to "sequential").

So here is a thought. Assuming that there is user data (stored by the LMS) indicating whether this user should be sequential or nonsequential, all we need to do is get that value into the course's tracking model (run-time navigation data model), where it can determine navigation.

To accomplish that, I wonder whether it would be possible to write a first SCO exactly as you suggest, that does an "assessment" determining which activity path the user will travel. However, instead of querying the user for the result, we include some javascript to query the value of a flag. The SCO would pop up and then automatically disappear.

Maybe it would be possible (in theory) for the SCO to query something under cmi.learner_preference, and to pass back the result as if it were the return value of an assessment..??

Just kicking around ideas here.

Dan

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Dan, I'm interested to know if you plan on using the ReLoad tool from ADL during the packaging of your course. It's not necessary, however, I remember from a class I took from ADL where there are multiple functions within the tool to hardcode sequencing via drop down boxes, etc. It seems to make the entire SSN process much easier from org to org or SCO to SCO. I also remember a pretty extensive set of options to include multiple sequencing within one manifest. I would think this would alleviate having to package a course twice ... maybe.

From what I gathered out of SCORM 2004 School, I could see a definite approach where SCOs are developed and package in multiple fashions using imsmanifest.xml file templates of sorts to handle different SSN options. This would alleviate a lot of handcoding per job as they come up and retain a common SSN approach if so desired.

Anyway, take a look at ReLoad. Pay particular attention to the SSN options availaible within the tool. I know that the options greatly simplify how I will work with my Lectora content in the future. Specifically, my goal is to remove all internal scripting within Lectora that handle SSN on Trivantis' proprietary approach. This would seem to eliminate a lot of your headaches when approaching SSN ... which is anything but "simple"!

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Hi Michael,

I've been using Reload for almost all my testing. It's great for quick testing and prototyping. I didn't take the ADL SCORM class, so I am probably not aware of some of the features (like I didn't know it supported multiple content organizations). For production, I think we'll look for a tool that has more automation available. I don't want to have to re-sequence a course every time it's updated. We're looking at Outstart Evolution as a potential authoring environment, and they've got their own sequencing tool.

Dan

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Yes - I think the idea of having a SCO that automatically does the assessment and moves on is a really great idea (and a perfect example of a "non-content SCO" for a paper I'm presenting at I/ITSEC...).

Certainly, you can have a SCO with JavaScript to do completely standard API calls to read a learner preference, set the global variable (to control sequential vs. choice) and then use Navigation to exit the SCO with a "continue" request.

And you'd probably get bonus points for creating the SCO to stop if the learner preference hasn't been set and ask the learner to wait for the teacher to tell the learner which choice to make (as in my original example) or take whatever action is required for your learners.

I'm in full support of this kind of SCO. Let me know how it goes.

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