So, what did I learn? It’s difficult to express exactly what I learned, but here’s a listing of the items that caught my attention:

• Reusable Learning Objects (RLO)
• Cisco’s RLO Strategy
• SCORM, AICC
• Metadata
• Functions of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS)
• Accessibility of e-learning to people with disabilities

The bottom line to this course was that learning, delivered by electronic means (e-learning defined), can be flexible, reusable and accessible if a strategy is carefully planned out and applied.

It’s on now to the next course, IPT 523 – Authoring Skills for Instructional Multimedia.  It’s a hard-skills course where we’ll be using Adobe Captivate and applying it to e-learning.  It should be fun and I’m currently using it for other projects.  It’s a powerful tool and capable of doing many things and I’m looking forward to learning more about it and applying it back to the work I’m doing.

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Sandra Stocks wrote an excellent paper on the Benefits of a SCORM-Conformant E-learning Strategy and applied it back to the organization she works in.  Sandra is part of a retail organization that serves pet owners with pet nutrition and pet products.  To educate staff on the items sold in their retail stores, Sandra is recommending to her employers an E-learning strategy based on SCORM.

What set Sandra’s paper a part from the others was how she illustrated one of the primary benefits of SCORM.  That benefit is being able to leverage third-party SCORM-Conformant content to be delivered on a SCORM-Conformant LMS.  For Sandra’s employer this saves time and money in development costs.  Instead of them building their own learning content to educate staff on products and services, vendors of the products they sell offer SCORM-Conformant learning content that they can leverage from and deliver on their own LMS.  An added benefit is they can also guarantee the quality of the content because it comes direct from the vendor.

This was just one of many benefits discussed by Sandra in her paper.  As someone who worked in a retail environment at one time designing and developing training, I was able to clearly see how her proposed strategy would work. 

Thank you, Sandra. Good work!

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Let’s begin by looking at SCOs. SCOs are a component of the Content Aggregation Model (CAM) which is a component of the SCORM. The CAM is comprised of Learning Objects divided into three categories:

• Assets
• SCOs
• Content Organizations

The contents of the learning objects are described by metadata. In addition, CAM includes a definition of how RLOs can be packed, delivered, and used.

Now, let’s look at RLOs and RIOs.  Discussions about RLOs and RIOs have occurred in many posts throughout this blog.  RLOs were discussed in Reusable Learning Object Strategies and RIOs were discussed in Expanding on E-Learning: Instructional Architectures and Learning Objects.  The bottom line is RLOs are comprised of RIOs.  RIOs by themselves do not have any context.  They are simply “chunks” of information.  When gathered together under a RLO, they create context meaningful to the learner.  This is illustrated in Cisco System’s Reusable Object Strategy.

It may be safe to conclude that although SCOs and RLOs are not the same, SCOs contain RLOs.  That’s the way I see it, but I’m open to correction on this. After all, that was the purpose of this blog – to create a discussion with other students of E-learning and professionals working in the field.

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I guess this means I’m at the official half-way point of my first full semester of higher education in so many years.

Yes, it’s time for Spring Break!

I’m 34 years old (at last check) and my liver can’t withstand the commitment it takes to enjoy fun in the sun and the unpredictability of life that comes with youthful indiscretion.  Instead, I’ll be using the time to reflect and catch up on blog posts I should have been making over the course of the IPT 525 class.

I’ve got at least three posts in mind for this week:

• Compare and contrast LMS and LCMS
• A breakdown of the differences between RLO, RIO and SCO
• Praise for a fellow student in a paper she wrote on the benefits of adopting a SCORM-Conformant E-Learning Strategy

I’m looking forward to the time off and catching up.  I know this blog hasn’t necessarily turned out the way I wanted to, but with less pressure from completing class assignments hopefully I can get back on track.

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I made mention of SCORM in a previous post but didn’t get into too much detail about it.  SCORM is a very detailed subject when it comes to E-learning, but here’s my attempt to define it based on what I learned these past couple weeks and put it into its proper context.

SCORM is the Sharable Content Object Reference Model.  It is a set of standards and specification for web-based E-learning.  It’s actually the product of the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL) founded in 1997 by the The United States Department of Defense (DoD) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

The ADL Initiative’s overall vision is to provide access to high-quality learning that can be tailored to individual needs and delivered cost-effectively anytime, anywhere.  To accomplish these goals, SCORM was created to foster the creation of reusable learning content as “instructional objects” within a common framework.

The high-level requirements of the SCORM, often referred to as their “-ilities”, highlight the importance of this model in standardization of online learning:

• Accessibility – the ability to locate and access instructional components from one remote location and deliver them to many locations.
• Adaptability – the ability to tailor instruction to individual and organizational needs.
• Affordability – the ability to increase efficiency and productivity by reducing the time and costs to deliver instruction.
• Durability – the ability to withstand technology changes without costly redesign, reconfiguration or recoding.
• Interoperability – the ability to take instructional components developed in one location with one set of tools or platform and use them in another location with a different set of tools or platform.
• Reusability – the flexibility to incorporate instructional components in multiple applications and contexts.

As an instructional designer, I feel the ability to create E-learning under a set of guidelines such as the SCORM keeps the content relevant, easy to update and transferrable.  Some people may see the SCORM as restrictive, but the beauty of such standards is that even though the technology to deliver E-learning may change, the standards by which it is designed and developed remain unchanged.  ADL’s commitment to standards and regularly updating them helps with accessibility and interoperability.

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It’s definitely a different experience to the traditional form of learning I am used to.  Most of my education was spent in classrooms on campus.  The WELPS class I’m taking is entirely online, taught in an asynchronous manner.  Think of it as one big discussion board like the old online newsgroups.  The instructor posts topics, questions and assignments to the bulletin board and the class interacts through discussion threads and we’re graded on our participation and quality of our content.

The upside to this experience is that I can participate in the class at times that are convenient to me, so I’m not bound by the traditional schedule of “class is every Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 6:00 p.m.”  The downside is that the discussion threads in the online classroom environment eventually resemble e-mail overload.  While the start of the discussion threads may be of value initially with feedback and insight about the topic from fellow students (including myself), they tend to taper off into responses of “I agree”, or “good point”, with less and less value.  This is not a criticism of my fellow classmates, but merely a simple observation about the class.

I’m enjoying the class and learning a tremendous amount of information about e-learning.  The field has changed a lot since I graduated with my Master’s in Instructional and Performance Technology 8 years ago and I hope to immediately apply what I’m learning back into my current work and consulting endeavors.

This week we are on the topic of SCORM and I’m sure I’ll have thoughts and ideas about how this impacts my current work.  Also, there is a paper that needs to be submitted on resuable learning objects (RLO).  Not a big one, but the beauty of the assignment is I believe about 1/3 for the content for the paper has already been written by me via this blog.  It’s been an objective of mine from the start to see if blogging will help with my papers and assignments.  By the end of the upcoming week, we’ll see if my experiment works.

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