2. Tour the campus & buildings
Explore benefit package
Take a skills assessment
Attend webinar
Attend a class
Rate your experience
Complete online course
Observe the job being done
Receive coaching
Watch a video
Follow a blog
Read a book by an expert
Elearning: Welcome & virtual tour
Elearning: Log into LMS
Elearning: Plant tour
Class: Your benefits & you
Class: Email and You
Elearning: Who’s who
Elearning: Our customers
Class: Finance 101
Recorded webinar
Webinar
Multiple choice test
Practice doing the job
Job shadow
Class: Using the intranet
Onboarding Plan BOnboarding Plan A
3. Your LMS Admin Wears Combat Boots.
https://github.com/adlnet/
xAPI-Spec/blob/master/xAPI.md
8. What is xAPI?
Answer #1
Next-generation SCORM
Answer #2
A protocol for recording any learning experience to give a more
rich picture of the development path.
Answer #3
A protocol and language for sending and retrieving data about
learning experiences: activity statements
Answer #4
“the holy grail” where we can correlate job performance data with
training data to assess people and training effectiveness
9. When we live in a SCORM world …
… we live in a box.
10. In a SCORM world…
We focus effort on the instruction & the media in elearning.
In an xAPI world…
We focus on the instruction & the media & the data in
everything.
11. In a SCORM world…
Developer tools do the heavy lifting for SCORM.
In an xAPI world…
There are few rich developer tools do the heavy lifting for xAPI
yet.
13. In a SCORM world…
We don’t think much about data or reporting.
In an xAPI world…
We now get to think about data and reporting that makes sense
for learning.
14. In a SCORM world…
We probably don’t track out-of-LMS learning at depth or scale.
In an xAPI world…
We can track out-of-LMS learning at depth and scale.
15. In a SCORM world…
We may struggle to tie learning “completions” to results.
In an xAPI world…
We can tie learning & behavior to organization results if we do it
right.
19. Claire read Business Writing for Professionals
John practiced frosting birthday cakes
Lindsey watched the Company History video
Rashad completed Oil Change Upselling
20. Claire read Business Writing for Professionals
John practiced frosting birthday cakes
Lindsey watched the Company History video
Rashad completed Oil Change Upselling
Actor verb object
Actor verb object context
21. Mohammed wrote a blog post about local theatre
that got 45 views and 3 comments
Oron rated ATD event Essentials of Creating
Learning Experiences with xAPI
@MMTorrance 4 stars “coffee
rocked, nice use of WebEx”
Claire read Business Writing for Professionals
John practiced frosting birthday cakes
Lindsey watched the Company History video
Rashad completed Oil Change Upselling
Cynthia completed Oil Change Upselling score 60%
Ladan simulated landing at DTW
Arthi simulated landing at DTW in SimSuite #4 and
was rated 98% by Instructor
28. Conrad Gottfredson & Bob Mosher's
5 (9) Moments of Learning Need
5 Moments of Learning Need: Gottfredson & Mosher
9 Moments of Need: Torrance
Apply
New
More
Solve
Change
SCORM
xAPI
SCORM
Before
Prepare
Remember
Teach
29. An Experience Learning Model
Experience
Debrief
Reflection
Action
Planning
What
What
happened?
So what?
Now what?
30. What can you do now that you have
xAPI?
Learn more about the learning experience
Learn more about the performance
Correlate learning with performance
Correlate learning with results
Correlate performance with results
Offer more targeted training
Support performance in better ways
Learn from others
Share learning with others
Compare performance and learning across learners
Deliver and track training outside of the LMS
31. What is an LRS?
Answer #1
Learning Record Store
Answer #2
It’s where we store the training data.
Answer #3
It’s a database where sent xAPI activity statements and
retrieve them later.
Answer #4
It is NOT all the things that most people recognize that your
LMS does.
32. SCORM is structured data
SCORM has “buckets” for everything it needs to
store.
An LMS knows what to expect with SCORM.
Learner Course Time Score Status
Houck, R Compliance 101 28 M 85 Pass
Simpson, H Compliance 101 35 M 90 Pass
Torrance, M Compliance 101 26 M 70 Fail
33. xAPI is semi-unstructured data
The LRS doesn’t know what’s coming with xAPI
Actor Verb Object Context
Houck, R completed Compliance 101 85% 28M Pass
Simpson, H practiced Frosting a cake 35M Pink
Torrance, M read Tin Can for Dummies 4 stars
34. xAPI is semi-unstructured data
Unlike SCORM, xAPI doesn’t need to understand
what data is being stored ahead of time.
All this requires an entirely new method of storing
this data – thus the LRS.
xAPI (and the LRS) allows storage of information that was
previously impossible (or really, really hard) to collect.
36. Your LMS
with an LRS
integrated
Users
Courses
Enrollments
SCORM
Data
Reporting
Courses
Classes
Certs
Badges
SocialLearning
Messaging
Performance,Talenthooks
Reporting & Analytics
Games Sims
Perf
Supp
Dash
boards
eCommerce
Import/Export Biz Data
LRS
SCORM
data
37. The other approach
(when your LMS isn’t ready or isn’t enough)
Users
Courses
Classes
eCommerce
LRS
Analyti
cs
Games Sims
Perf
Supp
Reports
Social
Performance,
Talent
LMS
Other
LRS
Biz
Data
Notas del editor
ASK: Using your pointer tool, put your name on which onboarding plan you’d rather participate in.
DISCUSS: Why did you pick that?
From Torrance & Wiggins, TD Magazine, Feb 2016:
From you, actually - ‘you’ being the learning and development community. In 2008, the Learning-Education-Training Systems Interoperability (LETSI) Federation set out to collect and investigate requirements for the ‘next generation of SCORM.’ LETSI leveraged Advanced Distributed Learning’s (ADL’s) community and network of partners to submit requirements in the form of over 100 whitepapers that would later become essential artifacts and sources of requirements for xAPI.
Sidebar materia: Rustici Software, a pivotal partner in the development of the Experience API, has archived these white papers for posterity.
In 2010, the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative began investigating new standardized experience tracking capabilities that could support emerging devices and technologies used for learning and performance today as well as in the future. In 2011, ADL issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to help ADL develop the practical successor to SCORM. Among the inspirations for the new project were activity streams, which laid the groundwork for the Experience API’s ‘i did this’ statement structure.
The name for the project was ‘Project Tin Can’ (as the requirements were intended to be based on a two-way conversation with the community), but ADL later officially named the specification the Experience API.
From Torrance & Wiggins, TD Magazine, Feb 2016:
The name for the project was ‘Project Tin Can’ (as the requirements were intended to be based on a two-way conversation with the community), but ADL later officially named the specification the Experience API.
xAPI is a simple, lightweight way to store and retrieve records about learners and share this data across platforms. These records (known as activity statements) can be captured in a consistent format from any number of sources (known as activity providers) and they are aggregated in a learning record store (or LRS). The LRS is analogous to the SCORM database in an LMS.
The “x” in xAPI is short for “experience” and implies that these activity providers are not just limited to traditional AICC- and SCORM-based e-learning. With xAPI you can track classroom activities, usage of performance support tools, participation in online communities, mentoring discussions, performance assessment, actual business results, and so on. The goal is to create a full picture of an individual’s learning experience and how that relates to her performance.
“API” stands for application programming interface, a common method for software systems to interact and share data. xAPI activity statements can be generated by activity providers and sent to the LRS, or they can be sent from the LRS to other systems. Many current applications offer APIs to make their data available in other systems, and vice versa.
One way to look at it is that xAPI is the next Generation SCORM. It’s a lot more than that, but let’s take a minute and talk about where we’re starting, and that’s, in most cases, SCORM.
ASK: In chat, summarize what you know about SCORM. Do you use it? Do you have to pay attention to it?
SCORM is a standard for the way that elearning courses communicate with their learning management systems. It tracks about 20 pieces of data, about 5 of which are interesting to instructional designers, and it’s all packaged up in a nice neat container.
SCORM is just fine if everything you need to learn and track can be housed in your LMS. And you only learn when you’re connected to the internet and logged into the LMS.
ASK: How much of what your learners need to know is learned in an elearning course in the LMS?
Let’s go back to the ‘book”.. This is pulled from the xAPI documentation almost verbatim.. this is the “promise” of xAPI.
#1 – actually this answer makes people involved with xAPI cringe. It’s like saying your smartphone is a next generation book. But it’s a good place to start the conversation. And then quickly move along.
#2 – from the instructional design perspective, when your job is to build and track training. This is where it’s at. With SCORM you can track about 20 things, only 4 of which are interesting. (Location, Time, Score, Complete, Answers). Now that’s not to say that you can’t get really clever with SCORM and trick it into doing a few other things.
#3 – builds off this – reinforce that learning experiences in the future won’t come entirely from e-learning. Give examples (RFID, Ab Scex KPI’s, other “triggers” that happen in the real world.. Call center logs, manufacturing floor, blah blah)
#4 – xAPI won’t do this for you. It provides the data that my help you do it .. But it won’t do it for you.
It’s worthwhile to spend a little bit of time talking about what happens when we live in a SCORM world (which we all do) and how xAPI is different.
Otherwise, what I’ve found is that people try to re-create SCORM using xAPI, instead of thinking bigger.
There are three “parts” to xAPI: The Activity Provider, the Activity Statement and the Learning Record Store.
There are three “parts” to xAPI: The Activity Provider, the Activity Statement and the Learning Record Store.
The Activity Provider is what’s sending the data – if it’s an elearning situation, then the activity provider is the course.
You are the one doing the thinking here.
The content is what you’re talking about. Again, if we’re talking about elearning, the content is … your content.
The Activity Statement is the format with which we’re sending the data. To be honest, the funnel doesn’t really hold up well as a metaphor.
And we’re pouring all these statements into a Learning Record Store, which is a database … kind of – but not really – like your LMS. At some point it may or may not have to mix in with some legacy content and data in order to make sense.
Here are some human readable activity statements.
ASK: What’s the pattern here?
The pattern is that there’s an Actor, a verb, and an object.
We can also add context about any of the items – actor, verb, or object
Quick run-down of Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping approach
With SCORM we’re only tracking the things in the blue ring, and really we’re only catching the practice if we’re being very clever about it. Or not tracking it very deeply.
With xAPI we can be tracking the green ring as well – what’s going on terms of behaviors and how we’re
Overlaying Kirkpatrick’s Evaluation Levels and Cathy Moore … with what we can track in xAPI and what we have historically been able to track using Kirkpatrick
Similarly the 70/20/10 model.
And the Gotfredson Mosher 5 moments of learning need (which I have expanded to 9 moments)
5 Moments of Learning Need: Gottfredson & Mosher http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/949/
9 Moments of Need: Torrance https://www.td.org/Publications/Magazines/TD/TD-Archive/2014/09/Nine-Moments-of-Learning
Answer #1It stands for Learning Record Store and, to make an analogy, it’s the Teller to xAPI’s Penn. Or whichever is the quiet one.
Answer #2It’s where we store the training data. It’s what makes xAPI work otherwise you’re just sending statements to the ether.
Answer #3It’s a database where sent xAPI activity statements and retrieve them later. Now we start to get interesting.
It does not make decisions.
SCORM can make decisions – sequencing and completion and such. xAPI doesn’t. but what it does do is remember what you tell it and allow it to pull it back later. And that let’s you do some interesting things.
Answer #4It is NOT all the things that most people recognize that your LMS does. It’s not the enrollments, people data, it probably has some reporting to it but that's not part of the spec, it’s not badging or any of the other things you’ll want to do.
SCORM is “rectangular” and predictable.
Databases like to be neat and tidy.. A place for everything and everything has a place.
But we really can’t create a place for *anything*..
Lets go back to that structured/unstructured concept. Databases like to be neat and tidy.. A place for everything and everything has a place.
But we really can’t create a place for *anything*..
-- Verbs, more flexibility
-- “context” – 4 star rating, Pink Frosting, homer simpson
-- even if we use “standards” like verbs, context is there for flexibility
-- Therefore critical on your reporting requirements that we talk bout later
[Green box fades in on click]
So xAPI is “unstructured” but not “illogical”…
We don’t NEED a course loaded in the system to understand data.. We don’t need to know ahead of time you’re going to send something.
This is an incredibly freeing concept – and one that throws a lot more onerous on ISD’s to think about their data. We haven’t really had to do that before!
Of course, this LMS wouldn’t keep you happy for very long, so you probably have some other things going on in your LMS.
So your LMS vendor has added on some things that aren’t SCORM – and that’s important to know. Useful … but not SCORM.
The obvious one is classroom training.
People love Completion certificates.
If you’re really fancy you have badges which are like souped up completion certificates.
Social is really cool so the better LMSes include some of that.
And there’s some basic messaging around all of that that’s really helpful.
Maybe at some point you decide you need eCommerce.
Games, Simulations and Performance Support … all super cool stuff.
And at that point we should add Dashboards
And as your learning organization matures, you’ll hook that all into Performance Support and Talent Management
If you have a BI unit, you might be dumping data out to them … if there’s anything they’re paying attention to.
And this is just the set of things that are attached to your LMS. Anything that’s not SCORM – because really: most of your games, performance support, random one-off learning, informal experiences – aren’t included in here.
And … according to the spec … doesn’t touch all the rest of it.
Of course … that’s where things get really interesting.
Now of course this is a gross oversimplification of what it actually takes to pull this off. Don’t go slamming your LMS vendor for not having done this yet. It’s way more complicated than turning a purple box to a green one … and there’s still just enough ambiguity in the spec – at least until CMI5 is finalized – that makes it tricky to pull this off seamlessly.
So there’s another approach that you can take on this. This is what you get when you buy an LRS. The core system desired around and optimized for xAPI, that then lets you get best-of-breed tools to hook into it. Since you don’t have to be confined to just elearning courses in an LMS for tracking, you you’re tracking things that happen in the real world, and you’re able to go out and do all sorts of things outside your LMS and that pretty well rocks.