SCORM is No Silver Bullet: Part I

Chrysler Academy is doing great things with SCORM 2004. They are realizing cost savings in content development, maintenance, and support. They are taking ownership of their training development. It hasn't been an easy path and they made it clear that SCORM is no silver bullet, but they showed that SCORM 2004 can be used to reduce costs, improve the learner experience, and improve relationships with suppliers. I listened to their transition story at Elliot Masie's Learning 2007 conference.

From left to right: Don, Gordon, Bonnie, and Bob

The key observation that the presentation made clear is that SCORM is no silver bullet. In order to achieve the results Chrysler did, they made critical investments to develop supplemental resources for development and they upgraded their LMS to support SCORM 2004. The most critical investment being the need for clear supplemental resources: technical and design specifications, a basic course shell, templates for sequencing models, and best practices for their specific SCORM implementation.

Chrysler's transition to SCORM 2004 didn't happen overnight. It took at least 3 years and this is based on a previous shift from custom web developed courses to "big SCO" SCORM 1.2 courses.

There are many observations worth noting from this presentation, but I want to finish with some of the results Chrysler reported from this transition. Given that learning is the goal, perhaps the most important result was the increased focus on the learning objectives instead of a previous focus on menu controls and framing. The use of a basic course shell doesn't stifle innovation (they showed many variations of design for each product), but it does focus content development on learning objectives rather than clever menus and frames. This also allows learners to focus on learning content rather than learning menu systems. This enables learners to learn what they need quickly so they can get back to work -- something they requested.

More to follow...