User Interface ( UI ) Interoperability for SCORM 2 . 0

Although one of the primary tenets of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) was to promote interoperability of learning content, it still remains one of the biggest challenges today. The SCORM has been highly successfully in making the run-time communications and the learner’s performance data associated with learning content, interoperable, by incorporating the IEEE 1484.11.22003 Standard for Learning. However, SCORM has remained silent about how a Learning Management System (LMS) can implement various technical aspects of the user interface. The SCORM has far too long dismissed several elements of the user interface as being “outside the scope of SCORM”. Ignoring how the learner may interact with or access their content from an LMS (or other content delivery application) has severely and negatively impacted both the technical interoperability of SCORM content as well as the user experience of the learner. Addressing “why” the learner may interact with various elements of self-paced content is the primary responsibility of the content development team, but the SCORM should provide a specification that would present options for “how” the learner might interact with multiple user interfaces regardless of the technology medium employed to deliver the content (e.g. web browsers, mobile devices, etc) . Some of the Department of Defense (DOD) services have had negative experiences when attempting to share SCORM content packages between their various LMS implementations primarily due to differences with both user interfaces and the Application Programming Interface (API) Implementation. The vision of plug-n-play interoperability of learning content is usually achieved only after several additional hours of modifying the content to work in a particular LMS implementation. In order to achieve adoption on a global scale, SCORM 2.0 must have a strategy to improve interoperability by standardizing the user interface controls in further support of flexibility, usability, accessibility, and durability. This paper provides a background and summary of the Navy’s successes with extending the SCORM to support standardized user interface options, and further proposes creating or incorporating a new user interface interoperability specification and a recommendation for supplying a standardized API Implementation as part of the Core SCORM.