Claude Ostyn's Blog

According to its online documentation, the IBM Home Page Reader (HPR) supports ECMAScript/JavaScript. (ECMAScript is the standard. The implementation of the standard is commonly called JavaScript. It is called JScript in Microsoft products). That reader even supports dynamically modified page content (as long as it is done properly using the DOM functions). Note that the ECMAScript communication API used by SCORM, while it requires an ECMAScript implementation, has no visible component and therefore does not affect accessibility. See http://www-306.ibm.com/able/solution_offerings/hpr4devhelp.html for a very useful page of online help for developers. I have not tried HPR myself, but I'm very interested in hearing about other people's experience with it.

Another source of SCORM news from a slightly different perspective is Judy Brown's http://scormwatch.typepad.com/ Judy (http://scormwatch.typepad.com/about.html) founded the ADL Academic Co-Lab and has a long and distinguished record of making things happen eLearning.

This post is for SCORM techies only. While reviewing web server logs I ran across an odd bug. Many people have run my cross-domain demo at http://www.ostyn.com/standardswork/xdomain/remotecontentdemo.htm. In that demo, content from 3 different servers appears on the same page. Content from two of those servers can communicate in spite of cross-scripting security blocks in the browsers, because it is actually served through reverse proxy that enforces security. The second demo on the page uses a test wrapper (which can function as a SCO) that acts as runtime environment for a demo SCO. When it is inialized, the test wrapper reads a launch parameter that specifies the SCO to launch. The wrapper and the SCO come from different domains, but both are accessed through the same reverse proxy so they can talk to each other. However they can't talk to the demo page since that one comes from yet another server. Now the bug: The log showed that for some people the SCO that was supposed to be loaded through the reverse proxy did not get downloaded. To make a long story short, I finally tracked that down to a cross-scripting "feature" of FireFox that caused the test wrapper initialization script to die before it could load the SCO.
The "wrapper" in the demo tries to discover an API object because it doesn't know whether it is running standalone or in a LMS. The discovery algorithm fails in FireFox because of an unexpected side effect of the FireFox scripting security implementation, and the rest of the initialization fails silently. Once this could be diagnosed, it was a relatively simple matter to fix the API discovery script to handle FireFox gracefully. This is documented in a new scripting resource document at http://www.ostyn.com/standards/scorm/samples/api_discovery_ff_issue.htm

Added a new document to SCORM Tech Resources. The SCORM 2004 content object communication data model is based on an IEEE standard: IEEE 1484.11.1-2004. A companion IEEE standard, 1484.11.3-2005, specifies an XML schema for that data model. LMS or other application developers who wish to use XML can use that standard schema. This new document is a brief overview of the standard and how it relates to the SCORM CMI data model. This document also discusses applications of the schema for reporting or for specialized applications. Available through the SCORM Tech Resources page.

The Microsoft SharePoint Learning Kit and the SharePoint Community Kit just got unveiled. It includes support for SCORM 2004 and SCORM 1.2. More details at http://www.microsoft.com/education/slk.mspx
Download from CodePlex at http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=SLK
This is interesting because it is not centered on a LMS but rather on SharePoint, the kind of community portal Microsoft is positioning as the hub for all your activities, much more than learning administration and delivery. While it supports assignments and grading, this approach uses SCORM learning content as part of the blend of resources in a learning community's online site. This product is aimed at the Education market, but the Community Kit is free for anyone, including corporate users of SharePoint. And the price is right... of course, it assumes that you are running a SharePoint site.
The other big news of course is that it means that Microsoft is now officially putting serious weight behind SCORM.
I'd be interested in seeing reviews from anyone who tries it.

Minor updates to PopSCO and the Prodding SCO that can be used to test a LMS or learn interactively about the SCORM API. Updated the description pages to make them more usable, and also updated the SCORM 2004 Test Wrapper page to better explain how the wrapper can be used for testing. All accessible through http://www.ostyn.com/resscormtech.htm

There has been a very interesting thread about this controversial topic on the Brandon Hall forums at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/brandonhall-lms/
This is a problem that is not going to go away any time soon, and one needs to be rather clever in solving it and still making content interoperable. The solution that works with one LMS is not likely to work with another, unless it is carefully crafted.