SCORM — Sharable Content Object Reference Model

Created by the ADL Initiative in 2000 to solve e-learning interoperability, reusability, and durability. The specification that defined LMS content tracking for two decades.

History

The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM®) was created in 2000 by the ADL Initiative to address e-learning interoperability, reusability, and durability challenges. This research was driven by the challenge that enterprise organizations faced when upgrading systems or changing vendors, which often required them to abandon expensive content and start from scratch. Conversely, large content vendors often specified their own delivery environment, requiring organizations to implement different, incompatible systems.

With this, the ADL Initiative designed SCORM to leverage standard web technologies as well as emerging learning technology specifications. SCORM allowed browser-based e-learning with plug-and-play portability, reusability, and instructional sequencing of self-paced content.

A 1999 executive order signed by President Bill Clinton established a task force charged with developing new standards and specifications for e-learning across the Federal Government and the private sector. Version 1.0 of SCORM was released in 2000, followed by SCORM 1.2 in 2001. The most recent release (2009) is SCORM 2004 4th Edition.

In 2008, the Learning-Education-Training Systems Interoperability (LETSI) Federation was formed to investigate the next generation of SCORM requirements. LETSI produced over 100 white papers that would later become essential artifacts and sources of requirements for the newer xAPI specification for e-learning.

Under a series of DoD Instructions — most recently DoDI 1322.26 — SCORM has been officially specified as one of the allowed metadata tracking options for DoD e-learning content. While the ADL Initiative now recommends xAPI and cmi5 solutions for new acquisitions, SCORM solutions are still in wide use to enable interoperability (course re-use) across compliant systems.

Technical overview

The latest SCORM specification consists of three different technical “books” that collectively address challenges associated with interoperability, portability, reusability, and the instructional sequencing of self-paced e-learning content:

  • Interoperability — The SCORM Run-time Environment (RTE) book defines a common data model and application program interface (API) for e-learning content, allowing standardized communications between client-side content and a system component (called “the run-time environment”), commonly provided by a Learning Management System (LMS).
  • Portability — The SCORM Content Aggregation Model (CAM) book defines how to package content for exchange from system to system, in a transferable ZIP file called the Package Interchange Format (PIF).
  • Reusability — The CAM book describes the components used in a learning experience and how to describe those components to enable search and discovery across LMSs and repositories.
  • Sequencing — The SCORM Sequencing and Navigation (SN) book, in combination with the CAM book, describes how SCORM-conformant content is delivered to learners through a set of learner or system-initiated navigation events.

SCORM 1.2

SCORM 2004 3rd Edition

SCORM 2004 4th Edition

User guides & references

Known issues & security

Members of the SCORM user/developer community have identified some JavaScript vulnerability and cross-domain API issues. The ADL Initiative assessed these issues and published the following papers to provide solutions and workarounds.

On lms.technology

Full SCORM specifications with interactive runtime API explorers are hosted on this site: