Last week, Rustici Software launched cmi5 in their SCORM Cloud utility. While this isn’t the most scintillating news, it is a major step. The SCORM Cloud implementation and support provides vendors and content developers with a place to test cmi5 launchable activities. The ability to test in an environment like this is vital to assure that cmi5 and xAPI have been applied correctly in new tools and new functionality in existing tools. For commercial vendors, this testing is vital.
Setting up a SCORM Cloud account is easy. Check out details on xAPI on SCORM Cloud. Initial use of SCORM Cloud is free. The free version is great for individual testing and small implementations.
What is cmi5?
cmi5 is a profile that sits on top of the xAPI specification and helps control content in the xAPI ecosystem. It allows content to be loaded to LMSs, but doesn’t require an LMS. Many people short cut the explanation by saying it’s the SCORM replacement. But that really limits the understanding of what it is.
Yes, cmi5 has all the capabilities that SCORM has to launch content in an LMS. But it goes well beyond what SCORM has been capable of delivering
- Interoperability – not only can cmi5 conformant content be launched in an LMS, but it can be launched by various tools as long as they have been programmed to accept cmi5 data.
- Extensibility – because it sits on top of xAPI, cmi5 extends the capability to collect data on learning experiences outside of the LMS and through the xAPI extensions, provide extensive detail on results and context of the activities within the course,
- Mobile Support – cmi5 content can be accessed via mobile devices
The ADL cmi5 work group is developing a document which goes into detail regarding what cmi5 can do versus SCORM. You can view their working document here.
A major benefit of cmi5 is that most of the attributes are content-specific. The xAPI statements carry all of the information about the content with the content. SCORM content depended on the LMS to keep it organized. (cmi5 content is self-aware). What this means is that the content doesn’t have to sit in the same place as the LMS. In our cloud-based. distributed content world, this is huge.
With Rustici’s adding cmi5 to SCORM Cloud, we should see more and accelerated development of authoring tools that support the creation of rich xAPI/cmi5 content.
To learn more aboutcmi5, go to the xAPI Resource Center.
What do you think? Have you explored cmi5 and/or xAPI? What are your thoughts on cmi5? Please share your thoughts by replying below in the comments below.
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