SCORM is No Silver Bullet: Part II

With the introduction of Department of Defense (DOD) Instruction 1322.26, it is common for DOD organizations to have a goal of “complying with SCORM.” However, based on observations of successful practice, this isn’t the right goal. SCORM is not a silver bullet or a checkmark. The folks from Chrysler got it right when they said SCORM is not an end in itself and that organizations need to identify their own desired benefits. Looking at Chrysler’s goals, practices, and results highlights common practices found with successful implementations.

Chrysler’s goals were to 1) to reduce costs, 2) improve the learner experience, and 3) enhance measurement.

Chrysler’s practices began with observing what SCORM doesn’t cover: instructional design, look and feel, taxonomy and naming, reporting, granularity, and security. They supplemented the SCORM specifications with guidance to cover these areas in a manner that enabled them to reach their specific goals. This activity is the critical, common feature of successful implementation. The supplemental effort has two parts: 1) ownership of the delivery system and 2) guidance on content development.

I’ve seen too many projects fail because the delivery system was not understood. It must be linked to the goals: there must be a clear mapping of how the delivery system will be used to accomplish the goals. It is not enough to just have a SCORM conformant delivery system. Two of the elements SCORM does not address are critical focus areas for delivery system investment: look and feel and reporting. SCORM does not specify much with respect to the user interface and SCORM does not require learner progress information to be persisted or made available beyond the scope of a learner session.

The guidance on content development has two components: 1) technical guidance and 2) instructional design guidance. The technical guidance provides technical requirements, taxonomy and naming rules, security, local best practices for SCORM content, and perhaps most importantly, a SCORM conformant content shell that standardizes navigation and menu items for a specific community. The instructional design guidance provides sequencing templates, guidance on look and feel, and naming conventions among other things.

Chrysler’s results are most objectively seen in terms of the reduced costs reported. They said their courses are more stable, which resulted in 70% less support hotline calls. Upfront development costs dropped 8-10% and maintenance costs dropped 80% on average. This saved 7 figures which were pumped back into R&D – and that is based on US deployment only.

Chrysler attributed the development savings to 1) re-using and re-purposing content objects enabled by smaller SCOs and 2) leveling the development playing field – innovation has gone up and costs down with increased competition to work on small SCOs.

Chrysler said the learner experience was improved by focusing development on learning objectives rather than framing devices, shifting from large packages to byte-size morsels, and using global shared objectives.

Chrysler said that measurement was improved by putting assessments throughout content, thereby enabling prescriptive learning.

It is easy to think of SCORM as a silver bullet, but successful implementation appears to require supplemental effort to ensure practices meet local goals. Common areas of such critical effort are delivery systems and content development guidance. SCORM is not for the weak hearted, but results may be gained by those who invest the effort.

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...