Our company has a client requesting "SCORM 4.0" for LMS compatibility. Is this an actual format? I know Presenter publishes to SCORM 1.2 and 2004....how can I find out if she means "2004" - and/or does "SCORM 4.0" exist?
I was meeting with a vendor several months ago who told us that SCORM 4 is 2004 (which was the first time I had heard that). I have since heard this from other sources that confirm this.
We continue to use SCORM 1.2 (Saba 5.4 SP3) - we have experimented using SCORM 2004 but seem to run into more more 'issues' then 'positives'. I've been told numerous times that SCORM 1.2 is outdated and that there are many 'benefits' in using SCORM 2004. If it is was issue free we'd be using it - but one's LMS can/will dictate what is best to use.
Anyone else publishing to SCORM 2004 using Saba 5.4.3 and seeing benefits? I'd love to hear about it!
The only reason why you would want to use SCORM 2004 3rd edition rather than SCORM 1.2 is because Articulate dumps all information going from the content to the LMS in the cmi.suspend_data data element of the SCORM. Every click and user action is recorded in this string. When using the SAP LMS we can debug and see the calls going to the LMS. This string iis encoded and it is impossible to see what is happening in your course, except for the bookmarking, which is also recorded in this string and which is easy to work out.
As the user progresses with the course this string gets longer and longer. In SCORM 1.2 the string can only accommodate just over 4600 characters. When your Articulate course is longer than 50 slides and there is a lot of backward and forward movement by the user (or the potential for this) this string reaches its limit and after this point NO MORE calls are made to the LMS. The end result is that there is no more bookmarking and completion status data is also compromised.
In SCORM 2004 however, this string can accommodate more than 64 000 characters and so you are safe.
As Anne indicates, data model improvements are the biggest reason in the PRO column to use SCORM 2004. Depending on your LMS, SCORM 1.2 may support a larger field size. 4K characters is the smallest limit in the spec. It doesn't mean an LMS can't support a larger field size. Our LMS, for example, supports 64K characters for suspend_data in both SCORM 1.2 and 2004.
The other PRO column entry for SCORM 2004 is sequencing. If your packaging design is setup to take advantage of sequencing, it's a really nice way to logically abstract your content while supporting logic you would have previously had to handle within a single package. The downside is many LMS don't handle sequencing well and while it's not *that* complicated, there aren't many tools out there that support this at publish time. So you'll need some technical knowhow to pull sequencing off well.
We usually recommend sticking with SCORM 1.2 for our deployments. Just less headaches in the long run for the features we require. SCORM2004 LMS tend to be more picky with strict data interpretation as well. We've found courses that will simply fail at a breakpoint on our LMS if a question type or response is incorrectly matched when submitting interaction data to the LMS when using SCORM 2004. With 1.2, this wasn't a problem.
6 Replies
They are likely referring to SCORM 2004 4th edition. Articulate Studio '09 currently publishes for SCORM 1.2, 2004 2nd and 3rd Edition and AICC.
Thank you, Justin. I have been hearing this elsewhere and appreciate the confirmation!
Sure thing! Good luck with your project.
I was meeting with a vendor several months ago who told us that SCORM 4 is 2004 (which was the first time I had heard that). I have since heard this from other sources that confirm this.
We continue to use SCORM 1.2 (Saba 5.4 SP3) - we have experimented using SCORM 2004 but seem to run into more more 'issues' then 'positives'. I've been told numerous times that SCORM 1.2 is outdated and that there are many 'benefits' in using SCORM 2004. If it is was issue free we'd be using it - but one's LMS can/will dictate what is best to use.
Anyone else publishing to SCORM 2004 using Saba 5.4.3 and seeing benefits? I'd love to hear about it!
THANKS
Mark Hammon
The only reason why you would want to use SCORM 2004 3rd edition rather than SCORM 1.2 is because Articulate dumps all information going from the content to the LMS in the cmi.suspend_data data element of the SCORM. Every click and user action is recorded in this string. When using the SAP LMS we can debug and see the calls going to the LMS. This string iis encoded and it is impossible to see what is happening in your course, except for the bookmarking, which is also recorded in this string and which is easy to work out.
As the user progresses with the course this string gets longer and longer. In SCORM 1.2 the string can only accommodate just over 4600 characters. When your Articulate course is longer than 50 slides and there is a lot of backward and forward movement by the user (or the potential for this) this string reaches its limit and after this point NO MORE calls are made to the LMS. The end result is that there is no more bookmarking and completion status data is also compromised.
In SCORM 2004 however, this string can accommodate more than 64 000 characters and so you are safe.
As Anne indicates, data model improvements are the biggest reason in the PRO column to use SCORM 2004. Depending on your LMS, SCORM 1.2 may support a larger field size. 4K characters is the smallest limit in the spec. It doesn't mean an LMS can't support a larger field size. Our LMS, for example, supports 64K characters for suspend_data in both SCORM 1.2 and 2004.
The other PRO column entry for SCORM 2004 is sequencing. If your packaging design is setup to take advantage of sequencing, it's a really nice way to logically abstract your content while supporting logic you would have previously had to handle within a single package. The downside is many LMS don't handle sequencing well and while it's not *that* complicated, there aren't many tools out there that support this at publish time. So you'll need some technical knowhow to pull sequencing off well.
We usually recommend sticking with SCORM 1.2 for our deployments. Just less headaches in the long run for the features we require. SCORM2004 LMS tend to be more picky with strict data interpretation as well. We've found courses that will simply fail at a breakpoint on our LMS if a question type or response is incorrectly matched when submitting interaction data to the LMS when using SCORM 2004. With 1.2, this wasn't a problem.
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