Gathering SCORM could transform eLearning Emerging standard enables accessibility, interoperability of digital content By Robert Brumfield, Assistant Editor, eSchool News advertisement eMail this article Send us a news tip Discuss this article Print this article Reprints & Permissions More Headlines TOP PICKS: from eSchool News readers Discover the latest news and information on technology products and services! Go inside the 'Product News Update' Explore over 4,000 company profiles--with product profiles, research and white papers, and funding solutions! Go inside the 'Technology Solution Center' Learn more about the key organizations who support the eSchool ideal in education. Go inside 'eSchool Partners Update' Post eSchool News headlines on your school websites—FREE! Go inside our 'Content Exchange Program' Hear what fellow educators are saying about the latest school technology initiatives. Go to the 'Ed-Tech Insider' blog Top headlines this week: Schools dial up new communication plans Pain marks district's IT makeover Spellings: Encourage girls in math, science Bill calls for MySpace age limit Project tackles credibility of online info An emerging set of standards for ensuring the interoperability, accessibility, and reusability of digital instructional materials will have an enormous impact on eLearning. The standards' creators say they will open the door for educators to share, contribute, and reuse digital learning objects at will, regardless of the content management platform schools might use. April 7, 2006—Educators who purchase, use, or create educational content for digital instruction should be aware of an emerging set of standards that are sure to have a profound impact on eLearning. The Sharable Content Object Reference Model--or SCORM--is a collection of standards and specifications adapted from multiple sources to allow for the interoperability, accessibility, and reusability of digital learning materials: everything from a video clip illustrating how cells divide to a PowerPoint explication of a sonnet. The SCORM specifications are becoming increasingly important for ensuring that digital content can be integrated into any learning management system (LMS) software, regardless of its manufacturer. What's more, SCORM is opening the door for the creation of "digital repositories," or collections of sharable, reusable online content that educators can search through to find items they can incorporate into their own instruction. In the late 1990s, disparate standards-setting and specifications bodies from the United States and Europe were working on similar learning standards for digital content. The U.S. Department of Defense, which uses many online training programs in its security and defense training efforts, eventually assumed a leadership role in bringing these disparate standards-setting organizations together. Led by Defense's Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) division, this collaboration produced the SCORM standards, the third permutation of which is set to launch in May. SCORM has been described as the "first step" on the path to defining a true, shared eLearning architecture. SCORM identifies technical standards that enable web-based learning systems to find, import, share, reuse, and export digital content in a standardized way. Earlier versions of SCORM, which has been around since 2000, permitted learning "objects"--presentations, tutorials, animations, simulations, audio or video files, and so on--to be shared among various LMS programs, but developers had difficulty standardizing the components that allowed for the repeatable tracking of student progress and remediation. The developers who put together SCORM 2004 answered that concern, pulling together what is considered to be a complete reference model for creating a reusable learning object with built-in student remediation functionality. SCORM 2004 Version 3 will improve on these standards even further, its developers say. "I usually tell administrators who are interested in SCORM that this is an insurance policy for your content," said Judy Brown, founder of the Academic ADL Co-Lab, a public-private partnership based at the University of Wisconsin. "If you're developing content, the vendor that has your learning management system may go away--you don't want that content to go with your vendor," Brown said. The Academic Co-Lab works with content providers and schools to promote the use of SCORM in education. As of press time, the group counts as its partners at least 60 institutions of higher education in the United States, and at least 148 companies claiming products that are SCORM-compliant. Philip Dodds, technical director of the Academic ADL Co-Lab, said SCORM-compliant content is important for any educator who intends to deliver web-based learning content administered via some form of LMS that tracks the learner's progress, can provide remediation, can know the learner's proficiency in the given subject, and can guide that learner to the next level of proficiency. Though SCORM might sound complicated, its desired outcome, explained Dodds, is quite simple--to facilitate the sharing and reusability of digital learning materials among educators.