Some vendors will tell you that you must have material which is 'compliant'. This might be 'compliant' to SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model AKA Shared Content...), AICC (Aviation Industry CBT Committee) or some other standard.

Well, this might be true if the product you need has to fit into an existing system or if you propose to introduce a particular learning management system (LMS) in the near future. But because there isn't a single standard & because most standards introduce some limitations on content, it may not be necessary, or even advisable, to follow this advice.

Whilst the standards have admirable goals, the E-learning market is not yet mature enough to bet on one or the other. Certain industries, such as aviation & the military in the UK generally expect vendors to meet AICC standards, whereas others expect to get SCORM 1.2 or 1.3 compliance. We believe that SCORM will eventually replace the AICC standards.

However, although the principle of being able to re-use learning objects is appealing, I'm often reminded of the days when we had 15 or so four-draw filing cabinets filled with overhead slides. The times when an old overhead or old course material was directly used in a new course were very few and far between. Either material needed updating or changing to fit with newer 'objects' .

So, from our current perspective, it's more the learning management aspects that we consider useful.

A learning management system (and there are many variations) should facilitate the work of administrators, learners & trainers. This can be a must-have in the larger organisation but it could also be an expensive & quickly outdated purchase. The ability to track learning electronically may be useful but it could equally be something that is not directly relevant to your current project & could be best served by some other means.

For example, in one piece of work we were commissioned to complete, the body accrediting the training insisted on paper copies of the assessments being made available to them. Whilst a detailed electronic tracking might be useful in terms of revising the training material, it would not have added-value to the assessment process. (Because it occured independently of the LMS) The decision was therefore made to develop a bespoke piece which did not fully meet the detail of either of the main standards. We still produced small, independent modules, which could easily be updated for SCORM compliance at a later date but the overall package was not and it saved the customer a significant amount of money.

In other situations, a compliant system might be very useful. A simple, SQL database driven LMS can be provided. This type of system tends to be AICC compliant & holds employee details such as what an individual has studied, how long it took and their results. (This is changing & SQL based systems are becoming more the norm & capable of transferring greater detail)

Originally, more complex LMS installations tended to use Oracle databases & could provide feedback to the trainers on the way that users were approaching the course. This can be useful for process improvement.

Most systems can integrate with HR databases. This can enable a link between individual development planning & training. But, this comes at a price and many vendors also charge on a per-employee basis, so some hard scrutiny of costs against the likely benefits is necessary.

Still other companies offer both authoring packages and LMS systems. Generally, the cost of the purchase of the LMS is related to the number of users. Of course, its necessary then to have a suitable server with sufficient bandwidth to accommodate the users or to use the vendor's hosting package which is likely to incur a substantial additional monthly charge.

A key issue with SCORM compliance is that it is relatively easy to meet the basic standards. In essence, the learning objects and structure are detailed in a manifest file and an instruction is sent to the LMS to start and end the objects.

However, problems can arise if the requirement is greater. The LMS vendor must have implemented all the commands that the developer wants to use. Thus, it's not unheard of to have a Scorm compliant LMS and a Scorm compliant course that can't function together as the developer intended. Matters are made worse if the compliance standards used are different. This is perhaps one reason to choose the package deal rather than independent vendors for the authoring and LMS systems but this means that conformance may be lost if a course is transported to a different LMS.

There are a wide range of options available for the developer wishing to produce material that is Scorm compliant but we believe that it will take a few more years before there is sufficient conformance for any materials to be truly operable under any 'compliant' LMS.

No-one can guarantee an e-learning piece will work with any LMS unless it's been tested on the particular LMS involved. The developing nature of standards mean that the terms "compliant" and "conformant" can often mean exactly what the vendor wants them to mean.

The potential buyer should try to extract the true meaning of what the system will actually do rather than rely on claims of conformance or compliance and, moreover, they need to bear in mind that tommorrow there may be another standard available.

For further information about the standards, please use the links below:

AICC – Aviation Industry CBT Committee

IEEE - Learning Technology Standards Committee – publishing standards relating to e-learning

SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model)

CETIS – Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards - Bangor University representing UK higher and further education on standards initiatives.

T4B- Who are we?

• People with experience of actually working in industry - not just telling others how to do it!
• People with a pragmatic approach to learning - Results matter!
• People with broad development & software solution knowledge - We use methodology that works best - One size does not fit all!
• People with 20 years experience of teaching adult learners from the shopfloor to post graduates
• People dedicated to leveraging CBT, Multimedia and Video Production technology at the service of the learner - Training needs to add value