Posted by wilton.pinheiro on July 7, 2009 at 2:27pm
I'm been working on sanduhrs code (http://groups.drupal.org/node/13452) for Drupal 6.
It's far from complete, but is a second step. CMI Datamodel is implemented and we have a conformant RTE. I'm missing the API/Session communication in order to get Claude's test script fully successful.
Anyone interested on this? I'm going to be working on this for the next weeks and we could get something faster if we join forces!
Regards,
www.sofi.com.br
Comments
tie in with Quiz module
I would like to see this implemented but have to focus my efforts on the Quiz module for now. You may want to take a look at it to see if there's code or node definitions you want to re-use. It would be nifty if the SCORM module used the same question nodes so one assessment could have SCORM and Drupal Quiz (including QTI, GIFT, etc.) views.
http://drupal.org/project/quiz/
-Turadg
http://educoder.org/
http://openeducationresearch.org/
http://educoder.org/
http://openeducationresearch.org/
tie in with Gradebook module
Since many SCORM objects already have assessments built in, it seems to me that passing the results of those assessments to the Gradebook module would be a huge benefit. In fact, that is the major reason I want a SCORM player for Drupal.
Thank you all for your contributions.
Sure...
Is there a code repository somewhere? Is it time to create a project for this yet?
Joe Kyle
--jjkd--
good news!
i would like to speak with you about your new work over the scorm player... can you send me an email to jpascual AT bizpills.es? skype perhaps?
;)
Update #1
Hi all,
Turadg and DrT, I'll keep these two integrations in mind, but for now I'm working on getting the API functional and compliant. Once we've gotten there, let's get those important pieces of a good Drupal Educational implementation together. I'm also using Quiz and Gradebook on my projects.
Joe, I hope that by next week I can commit the code to a repository.
Thanks all! Let's get this done!
Cheers
About update #1
@ wilton.pinheiro -
I am very interested in the staus of development for D6.
What is happening ?
SCORM is a nightmare
Hello,
We worked on a big drupal based elearning site last year and SCORM was an absolute nightmare. It's a standard with no standards... there's so much room for interpreting the standards that the whole thing is a mess. For example, there are guidelines for how you save the progress within a scorm file, but this can be done however the developer wants because all the functionality of the scorm content is bundled up inside it, so when you have multiple developers making content you get into all sorts of problems. So when you come to displaying the progress of each scorm in drupal you hit a big problem.
If I were starting a new elearning project today then the first thing i would do is ditch scorm, it's terrible. There are much better web standards that can be used. In drupal particularly it would be much simpler to build groups, content types, videos, images, files, books, taxonomy, roles, votes etc than to bend drupal to fit the 'black box' of scorm content.
Atrium is an interesting project management drupal distribution, it has a lot of functionality that could be used for education in drupal.
Also google wave comes out soon and there'll be an integration module for drupal. Personally i think using Waves for teaching would be a million times better for students than scorm.
The thing i find weird about scorm is that its really hard to author. I mean how easy would it be in drupal to allow a teacher to build their own psudo-scorm elearning object within drupal - upload videos, images, text, atttachments, quizzes, etc... and harness all the power of drupal to display that content.
Also the whole point of scorm is that they are re-usable objects ... but that almost never happens.
Drupal Developer : Brighton UK
E-learning standards
Scorm and QTI are funny "standards". The ideas behind them are great. But in practice they are almost useless as far as I know. LMSs are forced to implement subsets of these "standards" because their customers are taken by the ideas behind them. When the LMSs only support subsets, and not the same subsets, different LMSs are unable to share content. At least this is true for the QTI standard. In practice it would be just as good if the LMSs created their own standards. Different schools using the same LMS could share content between each other, but not between schools using different LMSs. It is the same situation we have today when the LMSs support subsets of todays all-embracing "standards".
The ideas behind these "standards" are great, why aren't there any real standards replacing them?
Well, yes but...
While I would be the first to admit that SCORM is not a clean standard to implement, nor is it without (many) flaws, I will invoke (and paraphrase) Winston Churchill, and say that SCORM is the worst form of e-learning standard, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. I regularly move SCORM packages across different LMS platforms from different vendors, easily build SCORM interchangeable packages using various tools, and deploy content built by 3rd party provider and/or custom developers. In my world, that almost always happens.
A half-dozen or more other open-source projects have managed to support SCORM (one of which is certified by ADL), and numerous commercial vendors exist in the SCORM ecosystem with varying degrees of minor nits and bugs to overcome, but for the most part, it works. Understanding the limitations of SCORM and working within them in a way that minimizes the risk around features and functionality can be done, if there is need to do so.
I know of no other standard or group of standards that meet the same need in regard to packaging and interchange. If that isn't a requirement, then yes, you can certainly build an effective environment with a 'native Drupal' approach, but that isn't the original basis of this discussion. For those of us who need SCORM functionality, we need it, warts and all.
I agree
I completely agree with you Joe, SCORM is far from perfect, but necessary. I've worked on both sides of the SCORM equation, (LMS and Learning Object), and while there are sometimes glitches to work around, it's far better than the alternative of trying to integrate every LMS and LO separately.
Without SCORM, LMS providers can't be changed without massive costs, and 3rd party content can't be added without lots of custom development. With SCORM, content can come from anywhere (through custom development or from one of dozens of authoring tools), and LMSs are transitory. It's a pain for developers, but it's a saviour for training departments.
I don't think of SCORM as having subsets, but rather having core functionality, and extensions. The core functionality is a lot easier to implement than the full set, which encourages adoption because of the reduced development time. This is exactly why these standards organizations have a basic, or introductory level of conformance; to encourage adoption. SCORM isn't a dejure standard (as in, defined and enforced by the ISO); it's a defacto standard, because of its widespread adoption.
On the other hand, some LMSs and content providers may have clients with bigger needs. The extensions are meant to meet those needs, while still making it possible (although more difficult) to support package interchange. Trying to meet the needs of as broad an audience as possible is exactly why SCORM has different levels of conformance and why it leaves room for interpretation; it makes SCORM easier to adopt and implement according to your system and your clients needs ... with the downside of making it harder to understand.
Does anyone have experience with QTI?
Well, it seems that we all agree on this:
Scorm doesn't seem completely useless. I don't have any first-hand experience with scorm, but I have mostly heard negative things about it from people who have tried to use it to move learning objects between different "frameworks".
I do have first-hand experience with QTI however. Have anyone been able to use QTI to move questions between different frameworks?
QTI
QTI is problematic also. I've tried to use it to move content from WebCT into Sakai. Our version of WebCT actually doesn't export to QTI, but we have a commercial program called Respondus that converts WebCT to QTI. Trouble is, the Sakai QTI import only seems to work on Sakai QTI output (and not alway then). So... you have to convert from Respondus QTI, which they claim is standard, to Sakai QTI, which is non-trivial. The one script we tried was developed by Georgia Tech, and converted only a fraction of questions successfully. At one point we started a project to write our own script, but that was abandoned when our developer left the country unexpectedly.
I do think that the Respondus-generated QTI works okay in some systems. Sakai is the only one I know from first hand experience does not work. Doesn't even throw an error. Just puts up broken questions when a student goes to take the quiz!
QTI 1.2 vs. 2.0 vs. 2.1
I think that to a significant extent, QTI suffers from some of the same issues as SCORM, it is a complex standard. I've implemented a (very) limited subset of QTI 1.2 for an internal project, using it as an intermediate standard between an XML-based question repository and downstream deployment/build tools. I didn't have too many problems in doing that, but I'm not sure that experience counts for much since I had the privilege of controlling both ends and the middle, while also aggressively limiting what I had to deal with.
There appears to be a fair amount of uncertainty in the 2.x line to date, with documents being withdrawn, re-released and other controversy around how to proceed with subsequent standards.
Scorm Module
Hey Guys,
I Just installed the Scorm module (forgive me if this seems rather elementary) and really have not been able to find any documentation on how to use it. I would love to help out in any way I can, does anyone have any updated links or other status updates on where this project is going?