If you are involved in the elearning industry then you are likely familiar with SCORM.

For years, SCORM has dominated the elearning landscape as the official way to standardize online course content.

Platforms like Articulate and Captivate encourage its use by making publishing course content to SCORM easy by just clicking a button.

Organizations all over the world have fallen into the habit of asking for SCORM for any elearning content they purchase or produce.

The SCORM footprint is a big one, that cannot be denied. But what I want to know is when will it finally fade away and join other extinct technologies of our past?

The longer we hold onto this dated protocol, the more we hold ourselves back. Specifically, the more we hold our online course content hostage. Tin Can API (also known as Experience API) has been around for a few years now, but adoption has been slower than many would have hoped, myself included.

When we view learning initiatives with SCORM goggles on, we tend to view it in a more limiting way. We define learning as finite events. The entire premise of Tin Can API was derived from the fact that people are always learning, not just when they are at their computers.

In many cases, organizations don’t even know about Tin Can API. I have found this to be true with people who write us about using LearnDash for their projects. When we let them know that Tin Can API is supported, we often have to educate them on what it is and why it’s good.

Of course we don’t mind doing this – it’s fun to let people know about new (better) technology! But I think that this is evidence that SCORM still has a tight grip in elearning, and I am struggling to see how we release ourselves from it.