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Scorm 2004 and Proper Use of The Didactical Objectives

SCORM has a concept of "system global objectives" for which the status is maintained across attempts and across SCORM 2004 packages. One of the most often seen requests is for a digital course to be assessed into a certain order for the student to achieve knowledge conforming to teacher's welldefined succession.

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91 views

Scorm 2004 and Proper Use of The Didactical Objectives

SCORM has a concept of "system global objectives" for which the status is maintained across attempts and across SCORM 2004 packages. One of the most often seen requests is for a digital course to be assessed into a certain order for the student to achieve knowledge conforming to teacher's welldefined succession.

Uploaded by

karadu
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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SCORM 2004 AND PROPER USE OF THE DIDACTICAL OBJECTIVES

Dragoş BĂRBIERU, Cătălin RADU, Daniel BELIGAN


“Carol I” National Defense University, Bucharest, Romania
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract: SCORM 2004 has a concept of "system global objectives" for which the status is maintained
across attempts and across SCORM 2004 packages. In practice this feature is often perverted to
provide a kind of variable to allow communication between activities. It’s easy to use this concept to
fulfil the imposed didactical objectives.

Keywords: e-learning, SCORM, sequencing activity, didactical objective

The main element set for the digital courses’ fulfilment consists in students’ achievement of
the educational objectives into a SCORM 1.3 standardized course and the main issue is to implement
the mechanisms offered by SCORM standard. This standard is purely technical.

We aim to analyze the educational objectives sequences by pedagogical objectives perspective


proposed by the teacher for every SCO. One of the most often seen requests is for a digital course to
be assessed into a certain order for the student to achieve knowledge conforming to teacher’s well-
defined succession. This is easily accomplished in SCORM 1.2 by tag’s: adlcp:prerequisites help and
below we exemplify it:

<item identifier='Capitolul 1'>


<item identifier='lectia1' identifierref='R_lectia1'>
<item identifier='lectia2' identifierref='R_lectia2'>
<item identifier='lectia3' identifierref='R_lectia3'>
<adlcp:prerequisites type='aicc_script'> lectia1&lectia2</adlcp:prerequisites>
</item>
</item>

Figure no. 1. The use of adlcp:prerequisites tag

To follow the Lesson 3content, firstly, the student must pass through Lesson 1 and Lesson 2.
The SCORM standard evolution made this tag obsolete. In Figure no. 2, we present a classical
example of a course’s structure, where every lesson is a SCO and has a corresponding didactical
objective. There are to be associated as many didactical objectives are needed and these are
established by the teacher.
Chap. I

Lesson 1 Objective 1

Lesson 2 Objective 2

Lesson 3 Objective 3

Lesson n Objective n

Chap. II

Chap. n

Figure no. 2. A course organization on chapters and lessons

The ongoing order settled for this course is sequential and, therefore, a lesson can’t be
accessed if there weren’t accomplished the previous lessons’ objectives. Generally, every pedagogical
objective must be mapped into an action, to clearly identify if the objective was or wasn’t fulfilled. We
can presume that Lesson’s 1 objective is for the student to entirely pass through Lesson 1 and this can
be mapped by a button set at the lessons’ finish to transmit to the e-learning platform that the student
ended and fulfilled the objective. Obviously, can be specified different objectives strictly related with
lesson’s accomplishment time, the results of a test comprised into the lesson or another actions
proposed by the teacher used to surely identify the student assumed or didn’t assumed the knowledge
fulfilling lesson’s objectives. Every lesson can have local and global objectives. The global objectives
can be accessed from every SCO. The possibility to access (read) Lesson 2 supposes for the objective
1 to be accomplished therefore is necessary that the objective 1 to be a global one to be able to access
it from inside of Lesson 2.
<imsss:sequencing>
<imsss:objectives>
<imsss:primaryObjective objectiveID="obiectiv1" satisfiedByMeasure="false">
<imsss:minNormalizedMeasure>1.0</imsss:minNormalizedMeasure>
<imsss:mapInfo targetObjectiveID="scorm.obiectiv1" readSatisfiedStatus="false"
readNormalizedMeasure="false" writeSatisfiedStatus="true"
writeNormalizedMeasure="false"></imsss:mapInfo>
</imsss:primaryObjective>
</imsss:objectives>
<imsss:deliveryControls completionSetByContent="true"
objectiveSetByContent="true"></imsss:deliveryControls>
</imsss:sequencing>

Figure no. 3. The Objective 1 mapping as global objective with writeSatisfiedStatus true tag

Into the Lesson 2 framework apart from the standard objectives, in our situation Objective 2,
we must define a new objective to validate if Objective 1 was or wasn’t accomplished. Into the
sequencing rules we add a checking rule before entering into the Lesson 2. This type of rule is called
“pre” and if this action isn’t satisfied the Lesson 2 won’t be activated, will have “disable” status.
A simplified scheme is presented into Figure no. 4.

Lesson 1 - Objective 1 write


Global objectives to global
Local Objectives write objectives
objective 1 - Objective back
objective 1 read objective 1
read from global
objectives, if true
Lesson 2
activate Lesson 2
Local Objectives objective 2 - Objective 2 write
objective back to global
objective 2 objectives
write

Figure no. 4. The mapping of lessons’ objectives as global objectives

The activities sequencing is found in imsmanifest.xml file and a sequence of it is illustrated in


Figure no. 5, where we defined 2 objectives, respectively obiectiv_back objective and objective 2 with
the following role:
- the obiectiv_back objective reads from the global objectives if there is or there isn’t
satisfied Objective 1. To this objective is associated a “pre”-type rule that activates or not
activates Lesson 2.
- Objective 2 is associated to Lesson 2 and this is mapped into the global objectives where
will be written its status.
<imsss:sequencing><imsss:sequencingRules>
<imsss:preConditionRule>
<imsss:ruleConditions conditionCombination="any">
<imsss:ruleCondition operator="not" condition="satisfied"
referencedObjective="obiectiv_back"></imsss:ruleCondition>
<imsss:ruleCondition operator="not" condition="objectiveStatusKnown"
referencedObjective="obiectiv_back"></imsss:ruleCondition></imsss:ruleConditions>
<imsss:ruleAction action="disabled"></imsss:ruleAction></imsss:preConditionRule>
</imsss:sequencingRules>
<imsss:objectives>
<imsss:primaryObjective objectiveID="obiectiv_back" satisfiedByMeasure="false">
<imsss:minNormalizedMeasure>1.0</imsss:minNormalizedMeasure>
<imsss:mapInfo targetObjectiveID="scorm.obiectiv1" readSatisfiedStatus="true"
readNormalizedMeasure="false" writeSatisfiedStatus="false"
writeNormalizedMeasure="false"></imsss:mapInfo></imsss:primaryObjective>
<imsss:objective objectiveID="obiectiv2" satisfiedByMeasure="false">
<imsss:minNormalizedMeasure>1.0</imsss:minNormalizedMeasure>
<imsss:mapInfo targetObjectiveID="scorm.obiectiv2" readSatisfiedStatus="false"
readNormalizedMeasure="false" writeSatisfiedStatus="true"
writeNormalizedMeasure="false"></imsss:mapInfo></imsss:objective>
</imsss:objectives>
<imsss:deliveryControls completionSetByContent="true"
bjectiveSetByContent="true"></imsss:deliveryControls></imsss:sequencing>

Figure no. 5. The definition of obiectiv_back Objective and Objective 2


If an objective is fulfilled, this must be signalled to LMS platform with the help of API
functions from SCORM 1.3. The ScrieObiectiv javascript function appeals to ScormProcessSetValue
function and write into LMS platform database the Objective 0 status, in this case obiectiv_back
(Figure no. 6). The API functions of SCORM standard are:
− initialization, Initialize function (“ ”) that returns a bool-type value and roles to initialize the
communication between LMS platform and the learning objective;
− termination, Terminate function (“ ”) that returns a bool-type value and roles to close the
terminate the communication between LMS platform and the learning objective<
− getting and reading parameters of CMI pattern, the GetValue function (element: CMI) : string
– has as entrance parameter a CMI-type element and returns a value as series of characters-
type;
− setting/writing parameters’ values for CMI patterns, Set Value function (element: CMI) :
string – has as entrance parameter a CMI-type element and returns a value as series of
characters-type. It has the role to set a CMI parameter in the LMS platform database;
− the data’s persistence is assessed with Commit function (“ ”) : bool and returns a bool-type
value;
− The exception and errors treatment is done appealing to three functions: GetLastError,
GetErrorString and GetDiagnostic.

function ScormProcessSetValue(element, value)


{ var result;
if (initialized == false || terminateCalled == true){return;}
result = API.SetValue(element, value);
if (result == SCORM_FALSE){
var errorNumber = API.GetLastError();
var errorString = API.GetErrorString(errorNumber);
var diagnostic = API.GetDiagnostic(errorNumber);
var errorDescription = "Number: " + errorNumber + "\nDescription: " + errorString +
"\nDiagnostic: " + diagnostic;
alert("Error - Could not store a value in the LMS.\n\nYour results may not be recorded.\n\n" +
errorDescription);
return;
}}
function ScrieObiectiv()
{
ScormProcessSetValue("cmi.objectives.0.completion_status", "completed");
ScormProcessSetValue("cmi.objectives.0.success_status", "passed");
}

Figure no. 6. The API SCORM functions’ appealing to write the objectives’ status

The SCORM standard use offers many facilities to the students and is a strong instrument in
teacher’s hand to create a personalized learning for each student.

References

[1] http://www.scorm.com/scorm-explained/technical-scorm/golf-examples/
[2] http://www.adlnet.gov/Technologies/scorm/SCORMSDocuments/2004%204th%20Edition/Documentation.aspx

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