SCORM - Overview

What is SCORM

This course on SCORM is for managers, authors, instructional designers and developers of online courses who want to comply with the requirements of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model 1.2.7 (SCORMTM).

This course is an update to the original SCORM Course offered for free by JCA Solutions.

This course has been updated to reflect the changes that have occurred in the SCORM specification between October 2001 and May 2004 when current and final version of SCORM 1.2, version 1.2.7, was released.

As a general definition, SCORM is a set of specifications for aggregating. packaging, navigating, and delivering high-quality education and training materials via the web whenever and wherever they are needed. SCORM-conformant courses leverage course development investments by ensuring that conformant courses are "RAID:"

• Reusable: easily modified and used by different development tools,  
• Accessible: can be searched and made available as needed by both learners and content developers, 
• Interoperable: operates across a wide variety of hardware, operating systems and web browsers, and
• Durable: does not require significant modifications with new versions of system software.

SCORM is a product of the U.S. Government's initiative in Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL). In November of 1997, the Department of Defense and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy launched the ADL initiative with the goal of providing access to high-quality education and training materials that are easily tailored to individual learner needs and available whenever and wherever they are needed.

Although this is a government initiative, it would be wrong to think that this cannot be used in industry and academia. In fact, as you will see, the SCORM specifications are a composite of several specifications developed by international standards organizations, including the IEEE, IMS, AICC and ARIADNE.