Now, this blog post might wander down into the weeds of technical specifications, but it is definitely worth explaining how InReach’s implementation of SCORM compliance is unique to the world of Continuing Education (CE) and how the implementation ensures certification standards are met.
As you know, most on-line CE requires participation and/or the completion of tests prior to certification. For all non-SCORM courses it is easy to ensure that a minimum level of participation has been met and that all tests are successfully completed before certificates are delivered. The process is black or white, either all certification requirements are met or they are not. Because participation tracking and testing are native to the InReach platform, the ability to track certification requirements are native as well.
However, a SCORM course behaves very differently. A SCORM course is a package. Since a SCORM course integrates with the InReach system, it is a self-contained module that “hooks onto” the InReach system. By package, I mean all aspects of the course—the learning content and the tests—reside within this package and aren’t transparent to the LMS. This lack of transparency can be troublesome in the world of on-line CE where course participation and successful testing must be proved before a certificate can be issued and credits earned.
To solve this, InReach developed a unique approach. The InReach CEMS has been developed with the ability to track specific attributes within the SCORM package so that participation and testing may be properly tracked. Once the InReach CEMS has determined that the learner has met these certification requirements, a certificate will be delivered to the learner. For those of you reporting to a governing body and worried about audits, you can be certain that certificates were only issued for completed courses. For those of you not using InReach, you may want to ask your on-line education management system how they determine course completion for a SCORM course. Do they, as we suspect, take it on faith that a person will complete the course before they hit the “print certificate” button? Or do they have some means of proving a course was completed before a certificate was issued? While this may seem like a minor matter, no one wants to end up on the wrong side of a credit audit.
So, as you can see, getting down into the weeds of technical specs can be very important to a CE provider.
For more information about SCORM, please feel free to call the InReach team at 888.892.7976. For a full recap of this series on SCORM, check out these blogs:
