Ernie, I had no idea you were working on this. I don't think Michael had heard of it either, or he wouldn't have suggested the other day that we start considering SCORM-compliance. But now you're saying that we'll have SCORM 1.3-compliance for dotLRN in a month's time!? Incredible!
I certainly agree with you that it's well advised to read the IMS and SCORM documents. Ironically, perhaps, your post emphasizes this. It adds to the impression that this is indeed a complex and confusing area, and that we need to help each other out in clarifying definitions. You see, you're mistaken about IMS Simple Sequencing; it actually does provide those wonderful features, such as learning objectives and progress tracking, that you hail as the hallmark of SCORM 1.3.
My guess is that you have read our (Polyxena's) text on the first version of the Curriculum module - which describes a mere upgrade of the functionalities that Philip Greenspun once authored and that are part of OpenACS 3.x - and mistaken this for our proposal of an IMS-compliant simple sequencing solution. That rather rudimentary curriculum bar feature, which doesn't provide (or claim to provide) simple sequencing by any standard, merely organizes HTML pages. IMS Simple Sequencing, on the other hand, organizes (and sequences) data objects called "activities" that in turn have learning resources, objectives, rules, and other metadata associated with them.
We'll soon put up our model for simple sequencing in the Curriculum module, adapted from the IMS Simple Sequencing Specifications to suit the OpenACS environment, for public viewing and scrutiny. You'll find that this model for a simple sequencing engine contains the features you desire. Except for content packaging, which is the objective of yet another phase of the Curriculum implementation. This feature, too, is solved by IMS standards in SCORM 1.3, if I'm not very much mistaken. However, as Warwick Bailey pointed out in the original thread on adaptive learning, the problem with SCORM is that it implies a "fragile" client-side user tracking that doesn't harmonize well with the basic server-side logic of OpenACS.
