Adapt Learning Community: tracking options

Hi Matt,

Thanks for giving us a basic overview of the current SCORM implementation; this looks like it covers most basic course scenarios.

SCORM 1.2. is still very much the most dominant method for tracking and I feel the adapt project should be moving forward with this for the first release. But it looks like this has already been decided :)

Thinking about SCORM, even if we are not considering it in the core, I think we should think about ways in which we can extend the basic functions if possible, allowing “hooks” if you wish (not sure if this is the correct phrase). Essentially if a developer (bespoke) wants to push data to the suspend_data variable, he/she should be able to. Likewise retrieve this data. Just a thought as there is often the requirement to push data which needs to be saved for returning visitors.

AICC we see used very rarely, but as Sven said is something that can be looked at in the long run.

SCORM 2004, again I’ve personally only come across a handful of client’s who have adopted this. But I would certainly say this could be something that we should look at supporting next. If from what Matt has mentioned is possible then this might be a small story to add to the project at a later date just to limit its barrier to the market for some users.

Have people seen many organisations adopting TIN-CAN LMS functionality? Although there is lots of hype about this, prioritising it due to the buzz phrase might gain it good ground in the market place, but will it be used by many, could we maybe put the efforts elsewhere on the outset to support 2004, and AICC maybe, just a thought?

Alan

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Great comment about Suspend_data. Yes it would be good if the framework contained functions for storing and retrieving data from Suspend_data.

This is something that I know I would use quite often as customers often want specific data stored and retrieved upon the next entry into the course.

Another one that I find important is lesson_location so that the user does not have to navigate back to where he / she left of the previous time.

Just want to stress again that I find support for interactions important too and that as with Suspend_data it would be great if the framework contained functions for this so that developers can "push" data to interactions.

Apart from lesson_status I find I use these the most.

Oh and one more thing. Retrieving information about the student, like student_name and student_id would be great to have functions for as well. Making it possible to for instance creating a game with a highscore list as a plugin to Adapt. How to save that highscorelist is another discussion altoghether.

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Martin - I completely agree that 'bookmarking' via lesson_location is an absolute must-have. But I think there are design questions around how this should work that need to be answered.

For example, what actually gets bookmarked? The page, the article, the block or the component? Or should this just be configurable? If so, what should the default* be?

Also, how are you returned back to that location on resuming the course? In many courses you'll get some sort of popup/prompt asking you if you want to resume/return to last page visited - but I've always gone with the thinking that because that's generally what you'd want to do, why make you read a message and click a button to achieve that, why not just send you right back there? You could always display a little Gmail style notification message explaining what just happened and giving the user the option to return back to the menu.

* I'm a great believer that the default setting/value for something should be the option you'd go for the majority of the time. This may sound obvious but it's amazing how often this isn't the case!

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Tracking to cmi.interactions - in my experience this is more a nice-to-have rather than an essential, mainly because so few LMSes actually support this (or have decent reporting options even when they do).

So personally I think this would be something to be added in phase 2.

Which raises the question - what do we do in situations like this? Should we put to the vote?

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[apologies, posted this with the wrong account earlier]

Hi Matt,

thanks for raising the question of decision making and voting. Just to elaborate on that point:

Generally, voting should be a last resort when it comes to decision making. We should at all times try to reach consensus via discussion. However, I do appreciate this may not always be possible.

It's worth recognising how the stage the project is at affects this:

Currently, we are in the process of taking the existing code library and refactoring it so that we can launch an initial release of the codebase. This stage is slightly different to what the future will be like in so much that there is no open codebase just yet which people can work on to pursue their own goals and requirements. We have set a target of getting the Adapt codebase re-architected within three months. Daryl is hoping to upload a first portion of proof of concept code today. This means that what will be delivered during this stage is very much down to the guys who are working on the code now.

Once the codebase is open, everyone can develop and add features. This is when the meritocracy kicks in, i.e. the solid implementation of good ideas will then start to shape the project. The main decision points will then be over what gets incorporated into the core codebase and how well this aligns with the overall vision and roadmap.

The core team will always be guided by the requirements that come form the community so it's important to hear these items and get a sense of how much they resonate in the community and we will at times put up polls to get a sense of relative priorities.

Hope this helps!

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Maybe we could start a list of "champion plugins" for interested parties to pick off and accomplish. Be it interaction tracking, Tin Can or AICC implementation or IE6 support (had to!). Just a thought.

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Alan, Martin - that's a very good point about allowing other developers to be able to store data in suspend_data. Obviously Adapt core will need to store its internal tracking data there - but there's no reason why a developer shouldn't be able to add in other information - probably using some sort of basic get/set API that forces you to assign your data to a variable. We would just need to add in some soft of check to ensure that the storage limit of the suspend_data field (4KB in SCORM 1.2, 62KB in SCORM 2004) is not exceeded (with the internal tracking data always being given priority).

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Tin Can/xAPI - yes there is a lot of buzz about this at the moment but I'm not actually aware of that many LMSes that have support for it. None of the major players (Cornerstone, SABA, Moodle etc) anyway.

Consequently, although I think it's an important thing to include for Adapt to be seen to support modern/emerging standards, I think it's not a 'phase 1' feature - and actually almost deserves its own special phase of development to ensure it's done right, taking full advantage of what it has to offer.

Some thought will also have to put into how this works in the authoring tool as I think it will be necessary to allow authors to specify what verbs and statements are associated with particular pieces of content/interactions. If you have a copy, the latest version of Lectora does this and might well be worth a look.

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Hi Matt,

It might be worth considering tincan adoption outside the LMS market too. We have a large ECM we'll be implementing now within the company that will giving us tincan triples too. I think you are absolutely right it is very early to be thinking Tin Can but if it was possible to provide some form of Scorm - Tin Can wrapper it might be a quick win, although I have no idea how feasible that is.

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