SCORM Sequencing Essentials and sample course

[john_hunt@us.ibm.com]

Hi,

I just had another look at SCORM 2004
Sequencing Essentials Content Example (SECE) Version
1.0 - http://www.adlnet.gov/news/articles/366.cfm. 

This provides a working sample of SCORM
2004 sequencing, in the form of an actual SCORM course.

To view the sample, you need to have
installed the SCORM Sample RTE Version 1.3.3, which
you can download from here - http://www.adlnet.gov/downloads/index.cfm.

Note - When installing this to
Windows XP Pro, I ran into one gotcha - be sure that when you install your
Java 1.4.2 SDK, that you install it to a path that does not contain spaces,
so you can set the JAVA_HOME environment variable more easily.

Here's my notes and observations on
the SECE sample. The course contains a remarkable amount of excellent detail,
and I highly recommend installing the sample RTE and spending time with
the course. 

[screen shots not included below; you'll
need to run the course to see them.]

1) The overall organization shows
a navigator with one larger learning object - Sequencing Essentials.

This opens with an Introduction and
ends with a Conclusion. In between are individual content units, or "leaf
activities" as we'll learn in the course!

The outline displayed in the navigation
pane looks like this:

Sequencing Essentials
- Introduction
- Sequencing Overview
- Tracking Model
- Sequencing Control Modes
- Constrained Choice
- Sequencing Rule Description
- Limit Conditions
- Rollup Rule Description
- Rollup Behavior
- Objective Description
- Conclusion 

2) The sequencing overview identifies
some key course concepts

a) Learning activity, which is some
"meaningful unit of instruction" - rather nebulous, as it could
be at a course, module, or lesson level.
b) Cluster (more interesting) -  a
learning activity that has sub-activities, more specifically, a single
parent activity and its immediate children. Clusters comprise the basic
building blocks of an Activity Tree.
c) Leaf - a terminal node of an activity
tree, the place where you find the actual learning content. In the above,
"Sequencing Overview," "Tracking Model," etc. are Leaf
activities.
d) Activity Tree - a structured sequence
of Clusters and Leaves, and the basic objects for the sequencing model.

So, for example, you might have a top-level
Activity A, which forms a cluster with three first-child Activities B,
C, and D.

Activities B and C each have two or
more "leaves" (1-6) with actual content. Activity D has a leaf
(7) and a child Activity E, which as two leaves (8 and 9).

So, 9 actual pieces of learning content,
organized into an activity tree with several activity clusters.

Something like this (the course provides
a good graphic of this...)

Activity A
- Cluster B
   - Leaf 1
   - Leaf 2
   - Leaf 3
   - Leaf 4
- Cluster C
  - Leaf 5
  - Leaf 6
- Cluster D
  - Leaf 7
  - Cluster E
    - Leaf 8
    - Leaf 9


Given an Activity Tree, you then create
sequencing to guide the learner through it.

The sample SECE course has a single
Cluster - Sequencing Essentials, and 9 leaf activities. 

In the sample SECE course, the Cluster
has an Overview/Objectives and a Conclusion, and each leaf activity also
opens with an Overview/Objectives, presents learning content, and closes
with a Conclusion. In the case of the leaf activites, all of the content
gets delivered to the SCORM package in a single HTML file, with nested
content for each discrete unit of content.

3) Tracking model
The tracking model is a collection of
sequencing information that relates each learner's state with regard to
the objects in the Activity Tree.

This, in turn, relates to the SCORM
run-time data model, which derives from relations among Shareable Content
Objects - SCOs.

4) Objectives
By default, cach Leaf activity has "local"
objectives.

You can also declare higher-level "global"
objectives for higher-level (cluster) activities. You define these in the
SCORM Content Package Manifest.

5) The course contains lots of additional
details on control modes, choice flows, sequencing rules, limit conditions,
rollup, and specifying objectives to the runtime model.

___________________________________
John Hunt
WPLC Education Development
Chair, OASIS DITA learning and training content sub-committee
IBM Software Group/Lotus Software
john_hunt@us.ibm.com