Forum .LRN Q&A: Re: Implementing SCORM 1.3 in OpenACS/dotLRN

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Posted by Michael Feldstein on

Staffan, there are a few points I want to address that I see as vital missing pieces to the puzzle you lay out in your post. First, SCORM is *not* what I would call "vast." It's not small either, and it's probably large enough (and important enough) that finding some funding for it would be a good idea, but I doubt that it's more than twice the size of implementing Simple Sequencing, and it may be significantly less than that.

Second--and this is critical--Simple Sequencing is part of SCORM now. It makes all the sense in the world for the people working on SCORM and the people working on Simple Sequencing to cooperate closely. I don't see why this cooperation would threaten the Polyxena's claim to the curriculum module project or its funding. To the contrary, it is likely to make your work more valuable to the community by leveraging the back end work you're doing.

Third, I never set Simple Sequencing, SCORM, and OKI as three top priorities. The community did. I said that SCORM 1.2 is important. Polyxena and their sponsors are interested in Simple Sequencing. MIT and some of the other academic institutions are interested in OKI. I am not setting or ranking the priorities for the community here.

What I am saying is that the three standards themselves are designed to overlap and interoperate. Therefore, our efforts to implement the three standards should also overlap and interoperate.

To my mind, this is just the sort of situation that the TAB is meant to facilitate. What we have is several simultaneous and independent projects where the whole could be greater than the sum of the parts. I suggest that the leads on the three projects at least touch base with Don to help ensure that their implementations are complementary. The benefit to doing so for all the various individual projects are (1) you get excellent technical guidance, (2) you get help in finding out what other people are building that could make your own development project easier, (3) you get higher visibility and therefore higher likelihood of attracting funding, and (4) you enhance your reputation as being good members of the community.

Please note that I am not a member of the technical advisory board, so the above is only a suggestion. The TAB will decide for itself what (if any) coordination/facilitation role they would like to take on.