SCORM converter of edX

[Xaver Y.R. Chen]

Hi,

My team are planning to develop an edX plugin which can convert the SCORM format to edX. We are the partner of ADL and they are also interested in our project. Before we start to implement this plugin, we want to make
sure that we are doing the right thing for the community of open edX.

We will be very glad if someone is insterested in our project and give us some comments or ideas. Thanks.

[Chris Dodge]

Yes, very interested. We (edX) get asked about SCORM quite a bit, but we haven't yet formalized our plans for this supporting this format.

We'd be very happy if someone could take this on. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you need a technical contact point re: edX's formats (which are documented at data.edx.org).

Thanks and very eager to see anything that you and your team can come up with!

- Chris Dodge

edx.org

[David Norwood]

We have created a PC-based courseware converter that reads in OpenOffice presentations and creates an edX import document. Our immediate task is to create a SCORM format conversion. We would be glad to participate as well.

On Sunday, December 1, 2013 1:16:37 PM UTC-5, Xaver Y.R. Chen wrote:

[Pete Vu Ngoc]

Hi,

I am actually interested in the reverse, something that would take edX problems or content and convert it to SCORM so that it can go into our university LMS learning object repository (LOR).

Cheers,

Pete

[Timothy K. Shih]

[Timothy K. Shih]

Dear All,

In the past few weeks we were investigating the solutions to convert edX to SCORM and vice versa. There are a few issues on the SCORM side that edX takes them differently. We are looking at templates to hide IEEE LOM in edX, as well as how to deal with Sequencing and Navigation of SCORM. We hope the conversion will be in two directions. If anyone is interested, kindly join the discussion. 

Timothy K. Shih

[Silly Clown]

I working with a University which has administratively subscribed to SCORM and thus created a barrier to working with the present EdX; so I'm following this discussion.

[Peter Pinch]

I would be interested to know what you've been doing with "hiding IEEE LOM in edX."

I'm not super-familiar with IEEE LOM, but we've done a little with embedding private metadata in edX XML, just to keep track of learning outcomes across course elements. Ideally, I would prefer a model that's based on a standard though. 

As the edX team is thinking about sharing of content (see the 4th item on https://edx-wiki.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OPENPROD/OpenEdX+Public+Product+Roadmap#OpenEdXPublicProductRoadmap-Studio ), metadata will need to be in the mix. 

- Peter

Peter Pinch |  Production Manager, Office of Digital Learning

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

One Broadway, 8th Floor  |  Cambridge MA 02142

E pdp...@mit.edu | T 617-253-6256 | C 617-652-0183

[Timothy K. Shih]

Dear Peter,

IEEE LOM (part of SCORM) is now an international standard. Mainly, the items come with a set of defined vocabularies for metadata. QTI (for testing) metadata may be included in IEEE LOM as well. I found the question types in edX has many features similar to QTI. Therefore, it is worthy for me to talk a look too.

To hide the IEEE LOM in edX is a temporary solution. Xaver and me will implement a tool to use a comment tag in XML to “encrypt” all IEEE metadata, since IEEE LOM had many details not defined in edX yet. We should allow SCORM users to retrieve their metadata after the content is transferred to edX and transferred back to SCORM. If possible, we will fill edX metadata from IEEE LOM. In fact, we had a metadata generator for IEEE LOM a few years ago.

My suggestions is edX may consider IEEE LOM. There are several domestic versions, include TW LOM in Taiwan and others in Canada and Singapore. Let me know if you need additional suggestions re IEEE LOM. 

Tim

寄件者: Peter Pinch <pdp...@MIT.EDU>
日期: 2013年12月7日星期六 上午4:52
收件者: "Timothy K. Shih" <Timoth...@gmail.com>
副本: "<edx-...@googlegroups.com>" <edx-...@googlegroups.com>
主旨: Re: [edx-code] SCORM converter of edX

[Shih Timothy K.]

Dear Peter,

Please allow me to ask you a question. We have a group of people in Taiwan MOOCs team who will like to visit edX for a few hours, to understand the most recent progress of edX project. I understand that you are very busy. May I know who to contact such that our group can visit you in early February? I sincerely hope that we will be able to have a chance to visit you. Thanks a lot. 

— Timothy K. Shih, NCU, Taiwan

http://www.csie.ncu.edu.tw/~tshih

寄件者: Peter Pinch <pdp...@MIT.EDU>
日期: 2013年12月7日星期六 上午4:52

收件者: "Shih Timothy K." <Timoth...@gmail.com>

副本: "<edx-...@googlegroups.com>" <edx-...@googlegroups.com>
主旨: Re: [edx-code] SCORM converter of edX

[Peter Pinch]

Hello Timothy. 

I'm sorry to say, I actually work for MIT, not edX (I know, it can be confusing). 

I've passed your e-mail along to a few folks at edX.

- Peter

Peter Pinch |  Production Manager, Office of Digital Learning

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

One Broadway, 8th Floor  |  Cambridge MA 02142

E pdp...@mit.edu | T 617-253-6256 | C 617-652-0183

[Shih Timothy K.]

Dear Peter,

Understood. Thanks a lot to forward the information to edX, especially in the holiday. Hope to see you one day in the future. 

— Timothy K. Shih, NCU, Taiwan

http://www.csie.ncu.edu.tw/~tshih

寄件者: Peter Pinch <pdp...@MIT.EDU>
日期: Monday, December 30, 2013 at 8:52 PM

[Akshat Shrivastava]

Hi

I am looking for the same plugin as well.

[Akshat Shrivastava]

Hi Xaver

Were you able to develop the plugin? I am keen to get involved in this

Thanks

Akshat

On Sunday, 1 December 2013 23:46:37 UTC+5:30, Xaver Y.R. Chen wrote:

[Markus Leibundgut]

Hi Xaver, 

Just wondering if you were able to build the SCORM import / export code? We are actually looking for some way to export edX courses via SCORM - if anybody has any suggestions as to how to do that this would be great to know. 

- Markus

On Sunday, December 1, 2013 1:16:37 PM UTC-5, Xaver Y.R. Chen wrote:

[Abdul Rehman]

Hi Xaver,

Greetings!

Appreciate your updates and would also be keen to know if you have good news on the SCORM plugin to have the LOs imported into edX platform (both on LMS and Editor) or edX plans to do more with XBlock

https://edx-wiki.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OPENPROD/Open+edX+Public+Product+Roadmap

Looking forward to hear from you.

Warm Regards,

Abdul Rehman  |  Principal Consultant  |  Professional Services 2204, Al Andalus Plaza, King Fahad Road, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. T: +966 12 673 1576 | M: +966 55 476 0004 | F: +966 12 673 6617 Skype: ar.edutech www.edutech.com  | LinkedIn  | Twitter  |  Facebook  |  Pinterest  |  Youtube

[Nate Aune]

Hi Pete,

I'm also interested in edXML to SCORM converter tool. Is anyone working on such a thing?

Nate

[Brad Smith]

I'm not doing a converter, but I have been experimenting with creating an XBlock that can host SCORM content. Unfortunately, I've run into a problem where attempts to do frequent updates to the fields.Dict field I'm using to store SCORM properties seems to lead to write attempts stepping on each other. 

You can find details and a link a github repo with code in this thread. Since then I've tried to avoid this problem with things like adding an instance of threading.Lock to the fields.Dict class and making _set_cached_value() acquire and release it to avoid this problem, but so far nothing I've done has worked. 

If anyone else is interested in this project and has any ideas to address this problem, I would love to hear them!

With regard to this thread, what is the advantage of a converter vs the ability to just host SCORM content within an XBlock?

--Brad 

[Nate Aune]

We went ahead and integrated content served by SCORMCloud with edX via LTI. It's a little funky to set up but seems to be working.

We'll take a look at the thread as its a direction we may go in if the SCORMCloud approach doesn't work for the customer.

Nate

--

Nate Aune - nate...@gmail.com

http://www.nateaune.com

+1 (617) 517-4953

[Brad Smith]

Please note that the scorm-hosting xblock is still in a very early stage of development, and was created in part as a way for me to learn about writing xblocks. In other words, don't expect too much. ;) But if you like the idea, I think it's do-able and would love to get other people involved.