We are thrilled to announce that Cassava is now SCORM conformant. With this milestone comes the ability for authors to export their training programs in the industry-approved standard format, thereby making Cassava interoperable with LMS systems.
Why does SCORM conformance matter?
Vendor lock is a common practice in the software industry. This approach relies on the misguided belief that customers will hesitate to change their preferences and seek greener pastures if the exit ramp is winding and adorned with potholes.
This lock-in mentality goes against our philosophy that customers should receive the same warm treatment when leaving as when onboarding. Cassava either wins your business by proving we have a compelling value proposition, or we fall short. SCORM allows us to honor this agreement by making it easy to export your training programs in an industry-recognized format. The exports are guaranteed to be compatible with any compliant LMS application.
We have added support for SCORM versions 1.2 and 2004 4th edition of the specification. We provide a complete downloadable archive of Cassava’s Onboarding demo training program to prove our conformance. You can read more about this availability by visiting our SCORM Conformance introductory page.
Schedule an Export
Exporting a training program in Cassava is a simple process that works independently of a paid subscription. Admins will find this functionality in Settings, where they can schedule an export based on a search of their catalog.
We do all the heavy lifting behind the scenes to transform an Experience into a SCORM package and make it available for download via a secured link.
What about imports?
This question of reversibility is logical- if I can export a SCORM package from Cassava, then I ought to be able to import one into it. We have already established that the SCORM specification supports the interoperability of training programs between systems. However, SCORM is not opinionated when structuring content. You are free to package your modules and lessons flat or hierarchical. This openness is great for flexibility but sacrifices the degree of automation possible when importing a SCORM package in systems that do not use HTML as their primary rendering engine - I’m looking at you SCORM Cloud and friends!
Automating an import is further complicated when you realize that SCORM offloads logic in assessments to JavaScript. A SCORM package formats questions as HTML and relies on system-generated javascript to specify correctness. Each LMS application implements javascript logic to suit its needs, which is a barrier to one-click automated imports. But do not fear. Customers can work with our consulting services to help migrate training programs from their LMS into Cassava, optimizing for chunking, pattern recognition, and repetition, which is necessary when delivering lightweight content to channels such as Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Summary
Try our Onboarding demo archive today by importing it into your LMS, or create a training program in Cassava and export it. As always, I welcome your feedback.
Michael
You no doubt have an opinion bubbling to the surface.