Tests
While Lectora offers both Tests and Surveys, the current example only includes a Test. The simplest way to describe the difference between a Test and a Survey is that a Test has scoring options on the Results tab of the Properties window.
There are nine tabs on the Test Properties window, but for our purposes I am only going to focus on four of the tabs. These are control properties that support the SCORM conformance of the course.
Test Content Tab
The Content tab in Figure 4 offers options to the course developer that determines how the test will function. For the purposes of this example, I chose to show the learner feedback for each question, and to require that the student answer all of the questions on the test.
Test Results Tab
The Results tab in Figure 5 is important to ensure the test communicates properly with the LMS. (You do not need the Results Submission section of the Results tab for SCORM communication of the test results.) SCORM-conformant content uses SCORM communication to pass values to the LMS. In this example, we chose to show test results to the learner at the end of the test. To meet customer requirements for presentation, we customized the results. We selected the option to Grade the test. Each test question has a weighted value, which the system tracks to determine if the minimum passing score of 75% is achieved.
When Completed/Passed Tab
The developer has the ability to control the path of the learner through the course, depending on whether the learner has passed or failed the test. In my examples in Figures 6 and 7, you can see that we chose to allow the learner the opportunity to retest as needed. The flow of the course was controlled by creating a Chapter for pass and fail scenarios. Each Chapter had unique content based on their result. Achieving at least 75% on the test takes the learner to a page within the success chapter. That page informs the learner of their successful completion, and provides instructions for exiting the course. More importantly, we added two actions that modified the necessary course variables to the success page as children.
Communicating with the LMS
In this course, we needed to capture and communicate to the LMS two critical pieces of information. The first variable tracked was AICC_Score. As defined in Lectora’s help, “AICC_Score has the AICC score for the title that is the sum of all of test scores in the course. If you modify the value of this variable within the content of a course that contains more than one automatically graded test, the modification may/will be lost whenever the student completes an automatically graded test.” We chose to create an action on the success page to force the value of this variable to be set as shown in Figure 8. This ensured that we send only the final score from their attempts to the LMS.
The second item we chose to track was AICC_Lesson_Status. Again as defined in Lectora’s help, “AICC_Lesson_Status contains the current status of the course within the AICC LMS. Lectora sets the value of this variable to "incomplete," and leaves the completion status of the course up to the LMS to determine, based on the current AICC_Score for the student and the value the instructor used for the Mastery Score when the course was published.” We chose to set parameters around this variable as shown in Figure 9 to control when the value is set to complete.
For this course the Condition shown in Figure 10 demonstrates how the LMS would not display a Completed status until the learner received at least a 75% score on the course test. The variable in Lectora ties to the value set in Figure 8. During our negative testing we found this was the most consistent way to ensure our required functionality held with the LMS tracking the courses. Not to assert it was a Lectora limitation, as it could have been some other customization we made, a condition of the LMS we were integrated with, and so on.
Publishing
The final part of producing SCORM content in Lectora is publishing the course. The Publish menu offers a variety of options, but the relevant choice for this discussion is Publish → Publish to SCORM/Web-Based. There are two steps to the publishing process.
The first step is a high-level error check that ensures the content is consistent to the point it will not immediately fail the publishing process. All errors and warnings should be resolved to ensure a published course will function properly in a LMS.
Errors are the more severe of the two. An error might display if you build a course with an Assignable Unit but without a scored assessment. By definition, a course with an Assignable Unit, intended to be SCORM conformant, needs either a scored test or a manual modification to the AICC_Score or AICC_Lesson_Status variables, so the LMS can track the score or the completion.
Lectora will not allow you to publish with any errors present. A typical warning will appear if you have two Pages with the same name. Again, these should be resolved before publishing.
Once the first publishing step has completed without issue, a Publish button appears. Clicking the Publish button opens the Publish SCORM Location window shown in Figure 11.
Not all the values shown are required, and many are the default values. For our purposes, we chose to make our content SCORM 1.2 Conformant, to have the course send Test/Survey Question Interactions to the LMS, and to prompt to restore the last viewed location within the LMS. Each company will decide what data to track and functionality to enable. The version of SCORM is important to ensure the content will function properly with your LMS.
The other critical tab for our development was the Options tab shown in Figure 12. Again, we left many of the defaults as is, but it is important when you publish to ensure the Publish All Pages/Resources in the Title radio button is selected. Store the Published Title in a Zip file is also helpful as this is the most common method for sharing a SCORM conformant package with an LMS administrator for upload.
Conclusion
While we did not disclose the nuts and bolts of our development in this article, I hope that the information presented is helpful and potentially useful for other people working in Lectora for the first time. Lectora is a very easy tool to learn and build with. You can make many of the features complex, but with just the information in this article you should understand the fundamentals of SCORM development in Lectora, and be capable of putting simple, SCORM conformant content together. Using some of the power features of Lectora, such as the Title templates, can allow you to produce these simple SCORM-conformant courses in a very rapid and repeatable way.
