Question
I am looking at am implementation of a course that will be built as a multiple sco consisting of 10 chapters, 10 topics in each chapter, and 5 quizzes in each topic. I have only ever seen a single level of navigation within an LMS menu so can this sublevel of navigation (chapters and topics) be displayed and selectable from an LMS menu?
I also need to track total time spent in a chapter and the date and time of each quiz within each topic. I suspect that in order to achieve this, each quiz needs to be selectable from the LMS menu? Ideally, this is not practical. Is there any other way this can work? i.e. Chapter and topic selectable from the LMS menu but quizzes selected from the course once you are in a topic, and still have each quiz date and time taken passed back to the LMS?
Answer
The short, simple answer: SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 both allow for infinite levels of hierarchy. Think of it like a file system on a computer... Aggregations are like folders, SCOs are like files. SCOs can be launched, Aggregations cannot.
The terminology above isn't clear enough to me to say definitively which items are SCOs (topics and quizzes?), but it is theoretically possible to do all of this, I think.
SCOs can track time. Aggregations cannot track it on their own, but some LMSs might allow for this in some fashion.
I'm thinking this is the basic answer to the question... and hoping that follow ups from the original poster might help clear up any questions.
Comments
Hi Tim, Chapter is an Aggregation and topics would be SCOs. As you mentioned the Chapters would be like folders and topics like files.. So I have the following questions:
Can you then build a number of quizzes in each topic and pass back results (date/time taken) for all quizzes within that topic? The quizzes are not SCOs, therefore not launched from the LMS menu. Instead they are selected from within the topics. I did not think that it was possible to do something like this as if each quiz's results need to be passed back to the LMS, they would each have to be launchable SCOs? I understand that this can be done for one quiz within each topic but not several. Can you confirm?
Is there any way to keep track of the time a user spends in each Aggregations? i.e. time user spent in Chapter 1 (topic 1, topic 2, topic 3....). I can only think of each SCO (topic) keeping it's own time that a user spent in it, and then the LMS has to aggregate itself...
How are the levels of hierarchy built within the organisation element in the manifest? Are the items nested to achieve this hierarchy? Would you be able to show a small example of this syntax?
Many thanks for your help.