Friday, December 28, 2007

SCORM

In doing a little research last night on online testing, I happened across an acronym, SCORM, as it related to some application or another (as in, the application is SCORM compliant). I looked it up and found the following wiki regarding it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORM.

SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model and it is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based e-learning. It defines communications between client side content and a host system called the run-time environment (commonly a function of a learning management system).

I need to research this a little more to understand if SCORM compliance is a standard I should aspire to in my designs or not. The main benefit I see is a built in market of clients that insist on SCORM compliance, particularly the government. And the government is no small client, particularly when you consider that public schools fall under some jurisdiction of the government. That said, it would seem that SCORM compliance is important to my designs. However, superficially, SCORM seems to be related to e-learning systems, where Flip is not so much a learning system, as it is a review and testing system (or a drill and test processor if you will). Still, in my cursory purview of SCORM standards I saw that some standards did apply to review and testing functionality. As I mentioned, I need to research this a little more.

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posted by bylaw @ 10:38 AM 0 comments

Thursday, December 27, 2007

a little XML knowledge

A couple weeks ago, I had an XML class at work through ExecuTrain. Justin B was the teacher and he did a good job of covering the topic in the time given (which sadly, was not terribly adequate). It provided me another tool to work with in the design of Flip. I have almost completed an XML schema based off the Flip Data Structure definition. I should have it up sometime later today. There will be some modifications from the data structure definition (meaning I will need to go back and modify the DSD as well), but I think I am moving in the right direction with the design.

A couple of changes that are being made to the data structure include removing the security, the results, and the Leitner progression from the data definition (as these will be stored either locally or online, but not with the file), and removing formatting tags from the data definition (as they really do not define the data but rather mark it up). I will probably break these elements out in separate documents.

And, in case you have not noticed, I updated the design of the blog. The header is a bit generic, but more appropriate for my focus on my design and development efforts than the previous BYU Cougars banner. You may also note that I now have a button for LinkedIn. If you happen across this blog and are interested in following the progression of these efforts, feel free to join my network, but let me know who you are and what your interest in joining my network is. Otherwise, feel free to join in the discussion and add comments to my blog. Thanks for visiting!

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posted by bylaw @ 12:50 PM 0 comments