Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Re: Persisting data in IMS or SCORM via LAMS

By: Ernie Ghiglione

[ Reply | Forward ]

Hi Tim, Barry,

Sorry Tim, I might have missed your posting before as I don't think I got the email when you posted it.

I think Barry nailed it straight in the head. As LAMS doesn't do the persistance for the SCO(s), then it won't record the number of times a student has attempted.

In LAMS shared resources, you can -however, see if a particular resource has been completed. Now in order for a resource to be flagged as completed, the student has to click on the Completed button once he has finished the instructions for the resource (see this LAMS 1.0.x Shared Resources animation if what I mentioned before doesn't make sense).

So it doesn't quite track attempts or even whether the student has at least accessed it once.

> Note the "In V1.1/1.2 we *plan* to add..."

LAMS 1.1 became later on LAMS 2.0 and I guess subsequentially 1.2 meant 2.1?

I don't think implementing a LAMS tool that handle SCORM 1.2 packages would be terribly hard as currently we play IMS CP packages (an specification heavily used by SCORM to package their content) in Shared Resources. But we would have to implement the Runtime-environment, although there are implementations available that we could use.

But let me ask a question about this:


Does any one who uses LAMS currently uses SCORM packages in their teaching? If not, would you be using SCORM packages in the near future?

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: James Dalziel

[ Reply | Forward ]

During my travels I've certainly had lots of requests for LAMS to support SCORM - in practice this means playing SCORM 1.2 objects (but not SCORM 2004, as there is less real world adoption of this, and there may be challenges with the IMS SS component). Providing a SCORM 1.2 player for LAMS should incorporate the tracking requirements of the run-time component. I'd certainly like to see this implemented for LAMS in the near future if possible.

As an aside, this would mean Share Resources (or a new separate SCORM player tool) would potentially produce assessment records (via the tracking component); and this may be relevant for any future LAMS gradebook integrations.

A different issue is whether LAMS would provide tools to *author* SCORM objects; and also whether LAMS might one day support sequencing rules based on IMS Simple Sequencing. For me, while both of these are potentially interesting, they fall outside the scope of the LAMS "sweet spot", so I don't expect the core team will be pursuing these angles on SCORM (at least for the forseeable future). Of course, that doesn't stop anyone else from investigating it

Posted by James Dalziel

By: barry beattie

[ Reply | Forward ]

James (and any other poor souls subscribed to this thread) if you could indulge me 2c worth of comments - from 1) an LMS integration perspective and 2) functionality we'd like to see

1) being a university, we have a "mothership" of an LMS (BB in our case) that tools like LAMS, PBLi, custom-builts, etc, need to plug into. the need comes from management of these tools and integration as far as linking, archiving (course cartriges, et al) and assessment back to BB's gradebook. We've been promised (from the BB side of it all) that for SCORM tracking, various session values are recorded into gradebook which in theory would match up to students and can be pulled back out again. Whether this is in reality wishful thinking is for us to find out.

The bottom line here, though, is two-way communication between the LMS and LAMS. This is different to LAMS launching a third party SCO. As the thinking stands here at the moment (and it's still early days for BB and us), any tool or learing object that requires tracking needs to use the LMS's infrastructure to do so. It would be good if it didn't and was self contained (easier), but how do you monitor/record progress (or results from inbuilt quizes) if you have a bunch of ad-hoc systems to manage? and then export results back to gradebook?

2) I've been looking at SCORM for such tools as Adobe's Captivate 2, especially regarding persisting data. Bookmarking of where the student got up to, progressive recording of results (what was answered so far in the quizes), etc. For us this is very important since we have so many other tools here that pre-populate a session's data from a previous attempt (load up their answer to the quiz from the last attempt previously) that this functionality is expected.

James, one last point.

you made a comment a while ago that I'd like to raise again because I think you're dead right:

(http://www.lamscommunity.org/dotlrn/clubs/technicalcommunity/forums/message-view?message_id=20466)

"SCORM is a content-centric single-learner model of e-learning; whereas LAMS is an activity-centric multi-learner model. There is no way (that I can see) to make multi-learner tasks in LAMS (such as Forum, Chat, Q&A, etc) "run" within the SCORM RTE, as SCORM wasn't built for multiple learners interacting together."

Here, Here!

to Re-cap:
LAMS being the parent to SCORM-compliant add-ins is one thing but we have to consider all add-ins to be able to plug into our LMS "mothership"** if recording of results in needed.


** Academics/teachers don't have to and can use LAMS stand-alone, but they'll get no support from the university infrastructure - from 24/7 harware support to helpdesk

Posted by barry beattie

By: James Dalziel

[ Reply | Forward ]

Yes - these are some key issues about the wider integration context for learning tools. I talked about this more generally in my EDUCAUSE presentation in October 2006, and I've just found out the podcast is now online - see:
http://connect.educause.edu/blog/carie417/educause2006_podcast_challenges_and_solutions_from_lams/19566
and the slides are at
http://www.educause.edu/upload/presentations/E06/SESS102/EDUCAUSE.2006.LAMS.ppt
There has also been some recent discussion in the LAMS Community of tools integration, see
http://www.lamscommunity.org/dotlrn/clubs/technicalcommunity/forums/message-view?message%5fid=396813

Regarding your questions, if you want to run a SCORM object (alone), then I'd suggest you do this direct from your LMS, and make sure your vendor provides the appropriate functionality to launch and track this.

My main current interest in SCORM for LAMS is having a SCORM object in the middle of a (typically) more collaborative sequence - eg, if you had some SCORM courseware about information literacy, and you wanted to do this as a collaborative class activity (rather than just as a link on a library page as general support material), then you might have some initial Q&As/votes/etc to explore students' current understanding of and ideas about information literacy, you might then run the SCORM object, and then follow it by some group work using forums/chat (perhaps different groups explore different aspects of information literacy, including trying different search strategies and sharing their results with the group), then maybe a whole class forum for wider discussion of the outcomes from the groups, then perhaps a quiz or essay for assessment (if relevant).

So taking this example, when it comes to "tracking" integration with an LMS, there are a few possibilities:

(1) When a student *clicks* on the URL to enter the LAMS sequence, the LMS might be able to keep a record of this action. This won't tell you anything about what they did in the sequence, but you'll know they started it.

(2) If the LMS can receive tracking information back from LAMS, it potentially could receive a copy of the SCORM RTE tracking for the SCORM task within the LAMS sequence, and populate the gradebook with this data. This would depend on whether the LMS can receive this kind of information from an outside tool into its gradebook. I haven't seen this integration done yet.

(3) A follow-on from this is the LMS gradebook could receive other tracking/results data from LAMS, eg, sequence completion information, maybe even completion of each activity, and maybe scores for those tools that produce scores in LAMS (eg, quiz). Ideally, if the LMS gradebook could receive whatever information LAMS could send it, then LAMS could send back a rich record of task and sequence completion, and SCORM tracking and quiz scores, and have it all stored in the LMS gradebook. There is some current discussion of these ideas in the LAMS-Blackboard community, which is working with about 5 Blackboard institutions on Blackboard7 to LAMS V2 integration. I love to see some or all of the gradebook integrations suggested above included in this work if there is interest in doing this. For details, see
http://www.lamscommunity.org/dotlrn/clubs/technicalcommunity/lamsblackboard/forums/forum-view?forum_id=393695

(4) Another dimension of tracking is the actual student activities within the LAMS tools, eg, list of answers to the Q&A, text record of the chat, etc. LAMS V2 can export a full record of student activities (at individual and whole of course levels) via the "portfolio export" function. If the LMS could receive this export package (perhaps into a portfolio area rather than a gradebook area?), then you could keep a full record of everything that happened in LAMS back in the LMS.

(5) A different dimension again is the "tools integration" idea for LAMS. LAMS V2 provides an interface for how external tools can be run inside a sequence (this could include the "standard" tools inside the LMS). So in theory, if LMS tools can run within LAMS, this may provide a different way of keeping tracking data in the LMS, particularly where other gradebook integration options are not possible. For example, imagine a LMS where there was no way to send results data from an external tool to the gradebook, but you did have the LMS quiz tool integrated with LAMS - then you could run a LAMS sequence using LAMS tools, but use the LMS quiz tool as the last activity, and so the quiz results would go automatically to the LMS gradebook, despite the fact that the gradebook wasn't integrated with the rest of LAMS. The same concept would apply to an LMS that had a SCORM player (with tracking integrated into its gradebook), and the SCORM player was integrated as a LAMS tool. NB: While this approach might work for gradebook records, it usually won't work for portfolio export so that *students* have a record of their activities (as the integrated LMS tool probably won't have a portfolio export feature like the LAMS tools).

Apologies for the long and complex answers, but I hope this provides some different angles on this issue.

The deeper issue here is that LAMS introduces new fundamental concepts to e-learning (such as sequencing of collaborative activities and student portfolio export), and most other e-learning systems don't see the point (or the demand) for these features. But for me, they seem essential to a rich online learning experience.

Posted by James Dalziel