I was very interested in these comments as the resolution of them would help
my own understanding of the SCORM position (and also Moodle). I therefore
contacted a friend, Crispin Weston of SALTIS (an Educational buyers and
vendors consortium) for his comments which he has kindly (and informally)
offered:
He writes: here are my comments on some of your correspondents:
QUESTION:
Anybody successfully using the question banks from cskills (construction
stuff) and if so which VLE have you got and what version please. I'm being
told by their support that yes they work, but not what with. We have Moodle
version 1.9.1 and I get the materials in, I can turn off the grades and all
that, but as soon as the learner goes back in to retake and clicks on the
'quiz' their previous score appears in tiny little numbers with an icon
marking it as incomplete.
I've had a few ideas and one was once the tutor has the result down can they
just go in and delete the result from the learner so that if the learner has
to retake there is nothing there. Seems a lot of faff, but if it is the only
way people can make it work then that will have to do.
ANSWER:
What standard does the cskills support: SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, QTI? If
SCORM, then it sounds to me like an implementation error in Moodle, which
may not be deleting state when the test has completed. A major problem is
when the standard gets the rap for errors made by poor implementations of
the standard - which is why conformance testing is critical.
If the answer is "none of the above", then it is not a standards issue at
all, but a predicable failure in a bilateral kludge.
QUESTION:
I'm not sure it is an issue with Moodle and Scorm - I think it is more
something in their product that I can't possibly turn off, but I won't know
unless I can find somebody who has actually made it work anywhere, not
necessarily Moodle.
QUESTION:
Hi all,
I too am getting a bit confused with these SCORM objects. Despite making
sure that the attempts for each exam are set to 1 Attempt, I, as a student,
can open the examination, take the examination and then go straight back in
and re-submit my answers. The results for the second attempt overwrite the
previous results, giving that attempts score in the grade book, even if it
is a lower score and the settings being set to Highest Grade. Perhaps this
is advisable in this situation but it still means I have no way of limiting
the number of attempts without controlling access to the course containing
the exams.
ANSWER:
Another issue with Moodle. Absolute square 1 of any managed learning
environment is to control access to the content. It appears from this
description that Moodle is not doing this, perhaps because it comes from a
position of open access. That may be what users want - but they should then
be aware that an open access platform will have no means of managing the
number of attempts a student is allowed to take.
It also appears that in this case Moodle does not store data for multiple
attempts, preventing any ability for the teacher to track student
improvement at a task over time - if this is the case, then it strikes me as
a very severe limitation.
QUESTION:
I have been very disappointed with the standard of these examinations in
general; No installation instructions were provided and at a training
session last week there seemed to be issues with the accuracy of every
examination we looked at.
ANSWER:
Content issue - though the difficulty with installation may also reflect on
the failure of the platform to provide easy import facilities. While it is
not the job of a SALTIS kitemark to dictate to providers how they implement
their products, I would see basic support for easy installation as being a
kitemarking issue.
QUESTION:
The accessibility of these exams is very bad too, no facility to flag a
question or to move back and forth without answering questions, a basic
requirement.
ANSWER:
Although it could also be a basic requirement to turn this kind of behaviour
off - ie. Student should not be able to answer question 2 until he has
answered question 1. This is a sequencing issue, which is a standards issue,
to the extent that the content provider cannot specify this kind of
behaviour to the platform. It is not that SCORM 2004 Simple Sequencing
cannot specify this kind of thing - but that it does so in a way which is so
darn complicated that no-one uses it. I am currently chairing the LETSI
Sequencing workgroup, which is reviewing all of this for SCORM 2.0 (I will
of course be keeping SALTIS participants updated). I might take some time
though!
QUESTION:
The feedback is also weak; no individual breakdown of students answers, just
a score.
ANSWER:
Whether this is a fault of the platform or content depends on whether the
standard being used is QTI (former) or SCORM (latter).
QUESTION:
A very poor attempt in my view.
ANSWER:
MOST of these problems seem to be implementation issues, either of the
platform or the content. My approaches (working through SALTIS) to solving
this kind of birds nest are layered:
1. a conformance tested kitemark would prevent incorrect implementation of
the standard (e.g. failure to delete state information when required).
2. this might be accompanied by a "feature grid" showing which parts of the
standard were being implemented. (On the whole, one would hope that
platforms implemented all parts, but this may not be realistic in the face
of the maturity of the market - how much money people are prepared to spend
on it - and on different pedagogical positions, from which some people might
refuse to implement certain bits of the standard on the basis of high
principle). The feature grid would at least help people match like products
and see where incompatibilities were occurring - if you want to run
assessments in "formative" mode, do not use a platform which offers only
"summative" functionality.
3. Both the above have to be absolutely objective. When it comes to
subjective (but possibly very widely shared) perceptions of quality, I think
there needs to be a really good system for sharing and authenticating user
reviews, backed, if necessary, by a legal commitment by providers not to sue
you just because you have said, or hosted a comment, that someone things
their product is lousy.
Crispin Weston of SALTIS
Hope this is of some help!
Ray Tolley
ICT Education Consultant
UK & European Reseller for eFolio
Maximise-ICT Ltd
www.maximise-ict.co.uk
Tel: 0191 414 6320
Mob: 07709 7709 45
Skype: ray.tolley
Winner of the IMS 'Leadership Regional Award 2009'
-----Original Message-----
From: Virtual Learning Environments [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Christopher Poole
Sent: 11 November 2008 12:14
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VLES] cskills scorm material
Hi all,
I too am getting a bit confused with these SCORM objects. Despite making
sure that the attempts for each exam are set to 1 Attempt I, as a student,
can open the examination take the examination and then go straight back in
and re-submit my answers. The results for the second attempt overwrite the
previous results, giving that attempts score in the grade book, even if it
is a lower score and the settings being set to Highest Grade Perhaps this is
advisable in this situation but it still means I have no way of limiting the
number of attempts without controlling access to the course containing the
exams.
I have been very disappointed with the standard of these examinations in
general; No installation instructions were provided and at a training
session last week there seemed to be issues with the accuracy of every
examination we looked at.
The accessibility of these exams is very bad too, no facility to flag a
question or to move back and forth without answering questions, a basic
requirement.
The feedback is also weak; no individual breakdown of students answers, just
a score.
A very poor attempt in my view.
Chris Poole
VLE Administrator
South Birmingham College
-----Original Message-----
From: Virtual Learning Environments [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Noel Chidwick
Sent: 11 November 2008 10:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VLES] cskills scorm material
Heather,
We had an issue with SCORM packages and Moodle 1.9.2, but upgrading to the
latest version of Moodle (currently 1.9.3+). This may well be worth
investigating.
Cheers
Noel
________________________________________
Noel Chidwick, Partner
The New Curiosity Shop Online College
Newbattle Abbey College
Newbattle Road,
Dalkeith, Midlothian,
Scotland,
EH22 3LL
Web: http://www.newcurioshop.com
Email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: +44 (0)131 208 1900
Skype: newcurioshop
on 11/11/2008 09:11, Heather Peake said:
> Hi
> anybody successfully using the question banks from cskills (construction
> stuff) and if so which VLE have you got and what version please.
> I'm being told by their support that yes they work, but not what with. We
> have Moodle version 1.9.1 and I get the materials in, I can turn off the
> grades and all that, but as soon as the learner goes back in to retake and
> clicks on the 'quiz' their previous score appears in tiny little numbers
> with an icon marking it as incomplete.
>
> I've had a few ideas and one was once the tutor has the result down can
they
> just go in and delete the result from the learner so that if the learner
has
> to retake there is nothing there. Seems a lot of faff, but if it is the
only
> way people can make it work then that will have to do.
>
> Any thoughts / ideas / etc please?
> Thanks
> Heather
>
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