Understanding SCORM.

SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Refernece Model. The motive behind developing any standard is to achieve interoperability which in turn would ensure reusability. When an instructor develops a course module through e-learning, the intent would be to reach as many as possible. Technical issues should not hamper the reach. Any LMS or e-learning course module is SCORM compliant, it can be used by a broader audience.

SCORM do not describe about the features of an LMS. SCORM describes how the content of the module be packaged, how the content communicates with the LMS, how can the user navigate through various aspects of the course say video clips, power point presentations etc. In short the interface between the content and the LMS which ensures interoperability with other systems. There are various content authoring tools which produce SCORM compliant content.

There are various versions of SCORM, each version addressing different aspect of interoperability, it depends on the application we use to decide which SCORM version we are willing to comply to. There are many benefits once you achieve SCORM compliance. There can be instances where we have to integrate certain course modules with a pre-existing LMS then the utility of SCORM comes into picture.

In brief, having interoperability achieved we can attain re usability, remote accessibility. In the context of remote accessibility I can quote the example of Internet. Internet is possible today because of standardization of network operations, we can thus access remote e-learning resources once we have the systems SCORM compliant. Therefore SCORM compliance is essential to make the e-learning resources reachable to a wider audience.

What does an LMS do?

In simple terms, LMS can be defined as a package which can be used to design and manage online courses. These systems also allow evaluating the course taker’s performance. The course may be designed according to the designer and the course content may include presentations, webinars and other multimedia content along with the supporting material provided by the course designer. The course taker can access these courses and take the assessment as prescribed by the course designer and complete the course. The LMS is responsible for evaluating and grading the performance of the course taker.

Apart from these tasks of course design and evaluation there a set of other administrative tasks also which are carried out by the LMS. It is a multi user system where there are a set of course designers who host their courses and there are a number of course takers who take courses appropriate to their requirements.The LMS manages the users and also their access to respective courses.There should be an appropriate permission granting system in place, to ensure security of the courses and allow access to the information to appropriate users only.

The LMS should be able to manage ‘n’ number of users taking up ‘n’ different courses simultaneously and their independent learning paths, performance reports etc.

Collaborative learning should be possible through forums, also it should be interoperable in order to collaborate.There are a set of standards in place which the LMS should be complying with in order to ensure interoperability and scalability. Most of the LMS are expected to be SCORM compliant.

Discovering Learning Management Systems

I was in constant search for some solution which would provide resources to learners with some automation involved. When I was teaching in college, I saw a good mix of students.In a class of 60 there were students who are quick learners and can learn things on their own, another set of students who learn at a moderate speed with appropriate guidance and another set who are slow learners and need to work very hard and as a lecturer I had to repeat things multiple times. As I was responsible for the entire class I used to keep an average speed to ensure every one gets the concept.

The first set of students were quick and self learners, I somehow used to feel that I am unable to do the sufficient to sharpen their skills.After I came out of college I was thinking of a solution for thoseand was searching through the net if I can develop something appropriate for self learners or if there is anything already in place for such needs. I came across learning managment systems.

In my view LMS is a variant of DBMS where the data and operations are the difference. We have a repository of information in the form of courses, which are accessed by people in different roles.The roles are course designers and students. Now in the context of courses we have new operations involved to carry out the courses. Some of these operations are assessment of the student and evaluation of the test taken.Let us have a closer look at each step of the learning process.We have two perspectives of viewing the learning process.

• Course Designer perspective.
• Course taker perspective.

Course Designer perspective : The designer aims at developing a course which is understandable to a huge audience, aims at having high technical standards included in the course ultimately adding a huge value to the course taker. This involves a lot of creativity and the skill of using technology to present the essential skills.

Course Taker perspective : The course taker when takes up an online course has certain requirements in mind. The obvious requirement in any course irrespective of online or classroom course is simplicity. The course should never sound like Greek and Latin to the course taker.However the simplicity of the course to a great extent depends on the course designer’s expression.

In further discussions we will have a look at what an LMS can offer for course design. There are a host of LMS’s available few of them are open source and few others are not.What I am trying to figure out is the basic components of LMS and its architecture.

Technology driven education

I remember a story in Malgudi days, where a foreign educated son with his foreign wife returns to Malgudi to see his father who is a sweet shop owner in Malgudi. He brings along with him a machine which creates stories provided you give the inputs of what kind of story you wish. The naive sweet shop owner wonders how can a machine tell a story which neither can think nor feel. Story telling is an art which communicates a message to the listeners in a pleasant way.

Teaching is also an art like story telling, we can also compare the story telling machine with the e-learning portals we have. The e-learning portals help people learn, but can never replace a good teacher’s class. For your attention I say a good teacher’s class. There is a saying in Telugu “Purushulandu punya purushulu veraya” which means “All men are not noble, Noble men are different category in mankind”, in the same lines good teachers are different from teachers. What if you dont get to meet a good teacher, will you stop learning? That’s not the case.

Every one is in the pursuit of knowledge, every one wish to improvise in what they do. I remember my mom watching television to learn multi cuisine dishes. We may not learn from the perfect person, but we wish to learn. E-learning is for those who wish to learn voluntarily. The willingness to learn is supplemented with the resources of e-learning which would surely help those who want to acquire new skills.Eklavya also learnt the art of archery without Guru. Online learning courses would help those who wish to learn new things and add value to themselves. We can call technology to our help when we don’t have an instructor to teach.

Effective learning

All through my education I was a just above average student. I was the top student in the class now and then, but today after working as lecturer for 4 years I rate myself as a just above average student. I was a classroom student, I used to assimilate the concept during the class and rarely would revise after going home.Thanks to all the excellent teachers who used to explain the concepts so well. I grew up with the idea that it is sufficient to excel in exams if we concentrate in the classroom and revise before examinations.
This formula of mine was successful until I took admission in to an engineering college. In the initial days when I joined the professional course, I used to listen very carefully what is being taught in the class and try to take down notes. ‘I only used to try to take down notes’, because from the lecture i was unable to interpret what should I write in the notes. I initially used to think they are some complicated concepts so I need to concentrate more in the classes. Gradually I lost interest in the class, at this point of time I should have realised that I should start studying on my own. I was too young then to understand what is happening.
I could only realise when my percentage dropped in the results of the semester exams.
The reason why I am explaining things so elaborately is to make a point that there is a scarcity of good lecturers or say good trainers for technical skills. When I became a lecturer, I understood the scarcity more closely. There should  be some way out of this crisis. We in India have a huge number of engineering colleges and also graduation colleges, but what is the quality of graduates we produce is the issue to be addressed.
Ofcourse classroom training is the best way of learning, but that is only true if there is a good trainer taking up the class. Otherwise it would be just a waste of time. There are number of students who attend classes just for the sake of attendance because university have restrictions on the attendance percentage.
I find e-learning is a solution for this crisis, not a complete solution of course, but to some extent it can solve the crisis of scarcity of good lecturers. This is a new art of teaching however, which invloves visualisation of the concept and also explanation of the concept. Classroom training is a bit backward in the visualisation of the concept because there the trainer has to picturise it on the board which might be abstract. The trend of education would gradually turn towards e-learning owing to the advent of internet and also thanks better machine capabilities.

Web Application development

Internet has become a very common word in past few years. There is something for every one being offered on it.Amazing platform for information exchange!
Getting into the specific detail of how it works is as complicated as the spider web.To keep it simple,we can put it this way ‘ there are servers of information from where the information seekers(clients) can access information’.The communication between the client and server is through the communication networks laid all over the world.
Next aspect is who enters the information into these servers,the answer is you,me and anyone.
Web application development is simple enough,where you have to understand the client/server architecture and the tools available for implementing this architecture.Web application development is a skill which is relatively easy and can be learnt on our own,rigorous training sessions under mentors is not required. There should be a collection of these resources and a document to guide you through the usage of the resources.
Client/Server architecture is the basis of internet, there is some programming required for the functioning of these servers and clients and their communication. For the purpose we have browsers from the client side. Web browsers on the client systems send requests to the servers based on the URL (Uniform Resource Locator). This request traverses through the network and reaches the intended server.
On the server side the functioning is impelmented through the server scripting languages like Perl,PHP etc.These scripts interpret the request from the client and execute it appropriately and send a response to the client.
Based on the application we wish to develop this basic functional model of Internet is modified with the help of various application development tools available.

Technical Writing,the profession

It was Greek and Latin to understand the functioning of a new mobile handset for many middle aged people when the mobile phones entered the market. The usage of mobile phones was confined to only handful people, however the initial cost factor was also responsible for this.(Thanks to Mr.Dhirubhai Ambani‘s sensational mobile service which brought down the usage costs of mobile phones in India.)

New gadgets when introduced face problems in acceptance due to lack of awareness regarding its usage and utility.It is the job of the technical writers to decode the use of the gadget and explain it through their writing skills in the manuals and other documentations.

Technical writer needs to have a right understanding of the technical functioning of the product and put it in words understandable to the end user. The document written by the technical writer is however expected to be grammatically correct and also according to the syntax of the language in which the document is written.

A product will be accepted in the market widely because of its presentation and simplicity of usage.However technically sound the product may be they may not be accepted in the market unless it is presented in the right way.Here comes the role of the marketing team and technical writers.

Technical writing is an emerging field with a good scope for free-lancing.As a free lancer, all you require is good language expression skills and understanding the standards of technical communication.Once the basics of technical communication are good the individual can upgrade themselves as instructional designer in their domain.Any graduate can take this up as their career, not a hard and fast rule that you are from a technical background. In summary, you need to have good interpretation and expression skills.The fun of working as a free lancer is that you are your boss no one else can dictate terms for you .

Education evolved

The process of learning has evolved through ages. Heard of ancient gurukul system which were single trainer oriented learning centers. A single guru was supposed to teach the students every skill of life. This form of education was however privilege of only royal families and children of gurus. Gradually royal families vanished and our society liberalized, now education is not just a privilege of ruling community or any specific part of the society.
New form of education through schools have emerged, the concept of gurukul is multiplied hundreds and thousands of times. The number of students and the number of instructors have increased by many times. The quality of teaching??? it remains a question. Every one of us has a personal best teacher.

There are also instances when students think it’s not worthy attending a class, they would learn things on their own. There can be various reasons for this kind of an attitude. Students may be tired listening to teachers for almost 6 hours a day. That do not mean students are not interested to learn. Learning would be fun only when done with will but not when imposed . However with the current system of education such flexibility of learning at your terms is not possible. This rigid mould of the system however hampers people from doing actually what they want to.

The students are also bound to the mass production formula called syllabus, which do not give much scope for innovation. However I should appreciate there are people who innovate against all these odds. The percentage of such innovators is very low in a country like India.
We need an e-learning system to allow people to learn skills at their flexibility. Nobel laureate C.V.Raman who was an accountant by profession won the nobel prize for nuclear physics, which he pursued out of interest. Individuals do well when they pursue any task out of interest. The e-learning system should be good enough to offers a wide range of courses for the audience, so that people can understand and choose what they want to learn. Such system would take education to a new level of liberty.