On June 2nd, 2015, we were part of a joint webinar presented by Bersin and CUES. As usual, the attendees had more questions than we could answer during the live webinar, so we’ve posted the questions and Andrew Downes’ answers here.
General
Questions:
- What is the common identifier that allows the xAPI to connect the data provided by the ‘activity provider’ to a specific user in the LRS?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: xAPI allows for learners to be identified by email address, Open ID or an account on some system, such as an LMS. For privacy reasons, a hashed version of the email address can also be used. In practice, most implementations either use email or an LMS account id. Activity Providers always need to know who a learner is in order to send the LRS data about that learner, which can either be done by having the learner log into the activity provider, or some kind of launch/single-sign-on process.
It’s possible that different Activity Providers might use different identifiers for the same person, for example accounts on different systems or different email addresses. In this case it’s important for the LRS to have a record of all the identifiers that relate to a single person. Activity Providers can request this information from the LRS if they need it (and if the LRS gives them permission).
See Brian Miller’s Deep Dive blog for a deeper dive.
LMS/LRS
Questions:
- Do you need a LMS and a LRS?
- How do you best see xAPI interfacing with an LMS? Which LMS platforms out there today best interface with xAPI?
- With an LMS, it’s easy to see where learners would go to view their own learning accomplishments. With an LRS, where does the learner go to view their own accomplishments?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: Despite the similar sounding acronyms. LRSs and LMSs are very different products. An LMS might or might not include an LRS and an LRS can stand on it’s own outside an LMS. You use an LRS to store, retrieve and study data about learning experiences; you use an LMS to launch and facilitate learning experiences. In most cases learners will never see the LRS or even be aware it exists; any data relevant to them will be pulled out and displayed within a learner facing system.
An LRS can be seen as replacing some part of the LMS, but there are other functions of the LMS that you’ll either need an LMS for or need to provide via other systems. For example, you might decide that you want to deliver all your learning content via email, a mobile app or an intranet site. In that case you might not need an LMS.
You can think of an LRS as “the part of the LMS that implements xAPI and that tracks learning activity”. People are gravitating towards using standalone LRSs. These products often take the form of a learning analytics platform.
Open Source LRS
Questions:
- Are there any opensource LRS?
- Is there an open source LRS?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: There’s four different Open Source LRSs that I’m aware of: Learning Locker, ADL LRS, lxHive and TinMan. They’re released under different licenses, use different technologies, have different levels of community engagement and are at different levels of completeness. None of the open source LRSs have the same level of reporting and analytics provided by a Learning Analytics Platform like Watershed and as far as I know none of them have plans to add this functionality. Some do include simple reports.
If you’re looking to get started with xAPI on a limited budget or want to do a lot of development yourself, an Open Source LRS is a good option. Another great low (zero) budget option to get started with is a free account in SCORM Cloud.
Bookmarklet: General
Questions:
- Are bookmarklets the only way to communicate out to an LMS?
- Can you talk more about the bookmarklet?
- For the Bookmarket, how is the person tracked. Via IP or some other way?
- I don’t fully understand the capture mechanism. Does the learner have to actively click a bookmarklet or is it automated in the background?
- I read a lot on mobile…is the bookmarklet useable on mobile?
Name of Answerer: Christopher Stevenson
Answer: The data points on www.cues.org are sent automatically to the LRS. If the learner is not on www.cues.org, they may voluntarily report using the bookmarklet by clicking on a button in their browser toolbar.
Bookmarklets certainly aren’t the only way to communicate with an LRS. That’s one of the big advantages of xAPI, *anything* can make a statement. Bookmarklets are just one way of tracking self-reported informal learning.
The bookmarklet is simply some simple JavaScript that manifests itself as a button you can drag to your browser favorites bar. For more information, click here.
Bookmarklet: Cues
Questions:
- Are all of the data points that are reported to the LRS from the Cues website voluntarily sent (e.g. the user must click the bookmarklet to submit)?
- CUES: are you needing the learning to click on the booklet for the Learning Record to be created?
- Does all content have to be marked as tracked by the user? Is there no automatic tracking?
- Does data show learners are actually using the tracking tools? How long does it take to build up this habit?
- How do you remind learners to click the bookmarklet to say they ‘did this’? Do you have trouble with learners forgetting?
Name of Answerer: Christopher Stevenson
Answer: The data points on www.cues.org are sent automatically to the LRS. If the learner is not on www.cues.org, they may voluntarily report using the bookmarklet. We are early in the adoption process and are developing processes for helping remind users to report their learning when not on cues.org.
Bookmarklet
Questions:
- How does CUES determine that learning occurred when someone “learns” from the .org website?
Name of Answerer: Christopher Stevenson and Mike Rustici
Answer: This depends on the type of learning tools used. Our eLearning courses include activities and testing that are tracked by Watershed. In other cases, we are tracking time spent on pages and activities completed.
At a more meta level, we have to acknowledge that there are limits to understanding the actual learning that happened in any context (we haven’t yet figured out how to monitor physical changes to neurons). xAPI provides a lot of visibility into activity and measurable outcomes (like test results and performance assessments). This extra data allows us to garner a lot of interesting and actionable data.
Informal Learning
Questions:
- Can you take a moment to address why it is important to track/measure informal learning? What are the pros and cons of doing so?
Name of Answerer: Dani Johnson
Answer: The level to which informal training should be tracked depends on the situation and the ability to do so. We all know that learning is happening all. the. time. And tracking all learning at all times is not only impossible, it can provide unwieldy data that isn’t used for much. We’re big on having a reason for tracking the learning that you’re tracking, including understanding what sorts of actions you will be taking based on the analysis of that data.
Good reasons to track informal data include:
- To gain an understanding of preferences and usage, including what types of content are being accessed the most, how long people are spending with that content, what format that content is in, etc. These types of data points across the board can give L&D an idea of where to focus their efforts and resources.
- To provide a way for learners to track their own learning. Users can benefit from a picture of the learning they have done over a given period. It helps with both career path clarification as well as future learning plans.
- To create the right kind of learning culture in the org. When certain types of learning are tracked, they are encouraged. Since a lot of informal learning happens on the job or with interactions with coaches, mentors, peers, etc., tracking certain types of interactions can help the organization understand how this learning is happening and how it is being encouraged.
Other types of informal learning tracking
Questions:
- Can you easily track data for informal learning that is NOT self-reported?
- What are some other examples of informal tracking and how is it being done?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: xAPI is an interoperability specification that defines how we transmit data about learning experiences. It doesn’t restrict or confine how that data is captured in the first place before it’s transmitted, but of course that data does need to be captured.
Informal learning is the learning that people do that is not directed by us. It’s visiting a website we’ve never heard of; having a conversation with a colleague in over lunch in the canteen; pondering a topic whilst in the shower. These types of activities are not only difficult to track via technology, but raise ethical and social issues if we were to try and capture them.
That said, some types of informal learning do happen publically and in ways we might be able to capture. Dr Kirsty Kitto of Queensland University of Technology is Australia, for example, is working on a tool and recipe to that will scrape data from social media sites and convert it into xAPI statements. Whether Kirsty and her team can filter the relevant learning information from the pictures of cats remains to be seen, but it’s an interesting project to watch.
There are a few commercial tools that allow learners to self report workplace and learning activities via written reflections and photo, video and audio recordings. these products often include some incentive for learners to record these activities, such as the facility to share with a mentor for feedback or publish to colleagues to share the learning.
Correlate to real world behavior
Questions:
- Does the Experience API measure achievement or is the focus of xAPI on measuring learner engagement?
- Earlier in the presentation you detailed many different learning opportunities which of course shows the very real need for a method of recording the learners activity. Can Experience API be used with the LRS to record the effectiveness of the different learning paths in terms of the workplace application of the knowledge, skills or behaviours?
- How do you see tracking of results materialize in a manufacturing company on the manufacturing floor?
- So if we record “Mike watched a video” how then do check if watching that video improved performance?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: xAPI is used to record learner activity which could represent engagement, achievement or both. It really depends what your focus is and what you want to track. in CUES case they were mainly recording engagement, but others are more focused on achievement in what the track.
xAPI can absolutely be used to measure the effectiveness of different learning paths. For example, CRS are using Watershed to analyse the paths learners take through a branched scenario simulation and comparing those paths to self assessments and performance observations following the simulations.
It would be great to see the performance of workers on a manufacturing floor being monitored either by integrating xAPI into factory equipment or via supervisor observations/evaluations of work. If 50% of the workers watched a particular training video and 50% did not, an analytics platform could compare the performance data for the two groups and calculate the impact of watching that video.
xAPI Tools
Questions:
- Can you give us an example of a xAPI application?
- Can you suggest tools that support or use xAPI?
- Has the adoption of the Experience API met your expectation? Has it been slow or on track?
- I came in late. What tool is used to develop content that can send this type of data to report on?
- This all seems in “development”; what is actually in place and useable today?
- What development tools can provide the highest amount of data in a course to evaluate how they are thinking through the simulations to create better courses?
- What tracker tools are already built? For example, if my company incorporates Watershed, does tracking YouTube videos come with?
- Which LMS Platforms support connecting and updating a LRS?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes and Mike Rustici
Answer: We keep a list of all the products and vendors we’re aware of that are adopting xAPI at ../adopters. Please let us know if we’re missing any! This list is growing each week.
Adoption is steady and constantly growing. Changing the way an industry operates is a long and time consuming process. I (Mike) personally believe that we are on track for continued adoption and that there is a definite snowball effect as more and more tools come to market. I’m constantly amazed at some of the new tools coming to market and look forward to seeing many more in the near future.
Regarding YouTube, yes we’ve tracked YouTube videos to Watershed in the past. Our Watershed team is happy to look at your requirements and discuss what’s involved in making your vision a reality. Many times that involves off the shelf tools, but sometimes your requirements will hit on an as-of-yet undeveloped part of the xAPI ecosystem.
Spec
Questions:
- Could you please explain the difference between Experience API and xAPI ?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: The original version of Experience API was developed by Rustici Software as part of a research project commissioned by ADL. This project was codenamed ‘Project xAPI’ and Rustici Software submitted the ‘Experience API’ as the result. This was later officially named ‘Experience API’ by ADL, but by that point there had been so much excitement and even early adoption of Experience API that the name stuck and we ended up with two names for exactly the same thing.
There’s no difference at all between Experience API and Experience API; zero, nothing, nada. People sometimes think that they’re two separate forks of the project, one owned by Rustici Software and one owned by ADL, but that’s absolutely not the case. Rustici Software, ADL and other members of the community continue to work together on the same single specification document.
Spec specific
Questions:
- Does xAPI have the way to save state or variables between learning sessions the way SCORM does?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: Absolutely! In fact it’s a lot more versatile than SCORM in this area. There’s less limitation on storage size and type of data and there’s ways to share data between learners and between Activity Providers for uses such as collaboration or shared learner preferences and information. See my Deep Dive into the Document APIs for more details.
Spec specific
Questions:
- Have you heard of movements to merge standards such that HRIS. ATS, LMS – systems could integrate?
- How does LTI fit into this picture?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: I’m not familiar with HRSIS and ATS so will answer the LTI question here only. LTI is a great specification for launch content that’s fairly widely used. It specifies some simple data transfer back to the sending system, but often there’s more or different useful tracking information that could be sent. It’s possible to use LTI to launch a piece of content and then use xAPI to do additional tracking back to the LRS. xAPI can also be used to track experiences that don’t need to be launched.
Statements
Questions:
- Give an example of how to write simple statements?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: This is actually the third question in our Tech Overview FAQ on tincanapi.com. Go take a look!
New implementations
Questions:
- Do you see this being applied to K-12 and Higher Ed? I talked to some airline pilot trainers who have put xAPI into their LMS…iPads and love it! 🙂 When do you see LMS systems incorporating this? Time to adoption?
Name of Answerer: Mike Rustici
Answer: We’re already starting to see LMS systems adopt xAPI. It is mostly in the corporate space, but some academically focused LMSs are jumping in as well. Blackboard was actually one of the first LMSs to have basic xAPI capabilities.
I would absolutely love to see xAPI applied to the education markets. In my experience, these markets tend to be a bit slower to move to new technologies than corporate markets so I think their adoption will lag behind, but it’s certainly coming.
Tracking webinar/coaching
Questions:
- Hi. I’m french. Maybe you gave elements about what I’m gonna ask. How can you track webinar, coaching …? I understand the way you can track an information, activity from the web but not for the others sources of learning. thanks
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: As I mentioned above, the trick here is about capturing the data; transmitting that data via xAPI is often the easy part. For webinars, a lot of webinar tools now have mechanisms that track engagement: what you clicked on, whether you minimised the window, how long you stayed for, etc. This data could be transmitted to an LRS via xAPI. For example Vantage Point by Refined Data is a plugin for Adobe Connect which does just that, which Hunter TAFE (a college in Australia) are using to track data back to Watershed.
TREK and TES are two products you can use to track coaching experiences with xAPI.
Wellness tracking
Questions:
- How do you see this apply in the growing Wellness movement, both in companies and with young individuals?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: I was recently at a medical education conference where I was fortunate to see presentations featuring two interesting wellness products: HealthKit a piece of software that supports storing and sharing various health metrics across mobile apps on a device and an ECG smartphone case which allowed patients to cheaply monitor their own heart, be alerted of warning signs and even share the data with a medical professional for advice. There’s plenty of other health related hardware and applications that track all kinds of information about our health activities and wellbeing.
All these products illustrate the need for a connected ecosystem where to paint a complete picture of the person we need data from a wide range of personal apps and devices, as well as their formal patient records stored in their doctors records. This complete picture will have doctors and patients together to identify problems earlier, diagnose illness better and live healthier. This is the problem HealthKit is aiming to solve.
This is exactly the same situation we have in learning. To paint the complete picture, we need data from the range of learning applications and devices combined with formal learner records stored on the LMS and HR systems. The complete picture will help learners and L&D professionals together to identify skills gaps earlier, diagnose performance problems better and work more productively. Connected data requires a common language; that language is xAPI.
Spec Specific
Questions:
- How does this differ from google analytics?
- How is the data you get from the LRS different that web-traffic data that you could get from a web analytics tool such as Google Analytics?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: Google Analytics is super simple to set up. You register with Google, add a snippet of code to every page on your site and wait for the data to appear in your dashboard. There’s no design thinking involved; you just get the data Google gives you: information about the user’s location and device, which pages they viewed, how long they spent on those pages and which order they moved through the site. Google Analytics can only be used for web based content. The data is stored on Google’s servers and can only be used for reporting.
Google Analytics only collects data in aggregate about the usage of web resources. xAPI allows you to track data on individuals so we get insights not just into our content, but also into our people. xAPI also allows the tracking of things that aren’t web pages, games, mobile apps, simulations, webinars, classroom attendance, etc.
xAPI is used to track and report on specific events that you choose. There’s a lot more upfront thinking and development about what events you want to track, what data you want to capture about those events and the significance of those events. xAPI allows you to track data such as a learner’s score, a video of some work they completed or their reflections on a podcast. You can track mobile and desktop applications, use of hardware devices and real world learning.
You can use the data from xAPI in analytics reports again specifically designed for your data set, answering the questions you want to answer about your learning experiences rather than those Google has designed for webmasters. The data can also be used to improve the learning experience, providing feedback to the learner or adapting their experience based on previous or concurrent learning activities.
The biggest difference between Google Analytics is that Google Analytics is a product owned by a company whereas xAPI is an open source interoperability specification. With Google Analytics your data is held by Google. With xAPI, various vendors have created products that utilize the specification, allowing you to share your data between products and store it where you want to store it.
SCORM vs xAPI
Questions:
- Rather than discussing SCORM as a technology isn’t it more accurate to describe it as a language? English is over 15 years old and we still use it for airline pilots to communicate with tower operators all over the planet.
- xAPI as successor of SCORM is still a little fuzzy to me. We now use SCORM modules within an LMS. xAPI seems to be more than a “learning material container”, right?
- Do you think the industry will fully convert from SCORM to Experience API and if so how soon?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: Imagine you had to speak to somebody about how people today learn without using terms that weren’t in common usage in English language 15 years ago. You’re not allowed to talk about social media, mobile internet or video streaming services. You might just about get away with talking about search engines. English has developed over the last 15 years and as human beings, we can adapt to those changes.
Computer communication mechanisms don’t change unless somebody changes them. Further, technology has changed massively over the last 15 years whilst the design of the human being has remained largely static. We see the age of SCORM coming through most clearly when learners have problems with pop-ups and frames, or access learning on a mobile device with an intermittent internet connection. We need a technology designed for the modern world.
One area of SCORM that’s very old fashioned is the concept of packaging content to be loaded into a system. There really is no need for that process in the modern world. Learning experiences can and should be independent sites or applications that are linked to from the LMS or other systems that launch learning experiences. xAPI is a communication specification and has nothing to do with containing learning experiences; it sets learning experiences free.
I don’t think SCORM is going away anytime soon though. If you consider that learning content might have a lifecycle of over five years and people are still making SCORM content today, you can see that SCORM will be with us for a while. It’s also worth noting that because xAPI is so much broader than SCORM, it’s entirely possible that many organizations will leave their existing SCORM content to continue to deliver click-next-quiz e-learning whilst augmenting this with additional learning elements supported by xAPI. There’s an increasing number of products that can convert SCORM tracking to xAPI statements so any existing content can tracked with xAPI without having to be updated to stop using SCORM.
SCORM to xAPI
Questions:
- I’m an ELearning Developer for a government agency and they will be shifting from SCORM to TinCanAPI; where do you recommend to start with the shift; what is the approximate learning curve for development
- Indeed, isn’t x-API like a piper cub in the scale of the transactions and SCORM like an airliner? I am concerned folks may get the impression that one should replace the other in all use cases when that may not be right – especially in large scale applications or that have a sizable code base in scorm.
- What is your recommendation if you have legacy SCORM/AICC content and want to start introducing continuous learning through xAPI?
- Will xAPI be compatible with older versions of SCORM like a traditional LMS based on 1.2 SCORM?
Name of Answerer: Mike Rustici
Answer: We always recommend that organizations start the shift to xAPI in small increments. Choose a specific pilot project by either identifying an unmet need in your training organization or a pain point that xAPI overcomes. Start small to introduce the concepts and technology and then build from there. Our Watershed team specializes in helping companies make this transition.
xAPI is definitely new and doesn’t even begin to approach the scale of adoption of SCORM yet. We absolutely don’t recommend a full scale replacement of SCORM for situations where SCORM is deployed and working well. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. SCORM courses will be around for a long time to come, just as we still have VHS tapes decades after DVDs were introduced and we even as we consume so much streaming video.
LMSs or other SCORM Players can still be used to deliver SCORM content. It is very easy to translate SCORM results into xAPI statements and to store all of that data in an LRS. SCORM Cloud has been doing this since the very inception of xAPI. Click here to see more.
General
Questions:
- I’m not sure I understand how xAPI works. For example, if my employer were using an LRS, how would I add this to my learning record, and how would they measure the benefit of it?
- What access/visibility to the person do you have to have to make their activity trackable?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: I’m assuming that “this” refers to the webinar. Let’s assume that you attend a range of webinars from different sources and that you’re the only person in your org who attended this webinar. There’s not a big enough sample here for us to compare people who attended the webinar with people who didn’t and even with xAPI it wouldn’t be worth the effort of integrating every webinar you attend from different sources with your company’s LRS. This is very much the area of self directed informal learning.
The tracking would therefore also be self directed and informal. You’d need to keep a journal of your learning experiences, perhaps supported by a bookmarklet to tag websites and a mobile app to photograph/video/record real world events. As you reflect on these learning experiences you’d tag them as being relevant for particular competencies relevant to your current job and/or future career plans.
Let’s assume you’re also regularly assessed on your competencies either by observations or measurements of the outcome of your work. To measure the effectiveness of this webinar, you could look at how your competencies you tagged as covered by this webinar improved during the period you watched the webinar.
Measuring the effectiveness of informal learning is harder work than measuring the effectiveness of formal learning, and arguably there’s less benefit to doing so (though the act of reflecting may help people to focus their informal learning on their target competencies). It’s certainly possible though, following the method described above.
Spec Specific
Questions:
- Is it possible to use xAPI to capture learning events that happened in the past or can you only capture events after xAPI is implemented?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: xAPI can be used to track events that happened in the past; this is how the offline tracking works, but it can also be used to convert legacy learning data. xAPI statements have a ‘stored’ property that records when the statement was stored in the LRS and a timestamp property that records when the experience actually took place.
Spec Specific
Questions:
- Is there a graphic available that shows these ‘layers’ of the xAPI that Mike is describing?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: I don’t think we have a diagram, but it’s outlined in detail here: ../the-layers-of-tin-can/ We also have a picture of an onion in a xAPI:
Rustici Specific
Questions:
- Mr. Rustici, I hear the untethered part of the discussion, and I know the Experience API allows for offline tracking; but I’m having trouble finding a way to actually do just that. I’ve spoken with Andrew Downes, with Rustici, and we’ve discussed how I will be publishing the lesson into the Experience API, but now I need to find an iOS compliant app. that can keep that record offline. So that when I’m reconnected to the internet it can be automatically uploaded to the LRS etc.
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: I’ll connect up with the question asker on their specific use case. For anybody with similar questions, Dominknow have a mobile player app that can track content from a range of authoring tools (not just their own) offline and send that data back to an LRS when the connection becomes available. Some LMSs include offline tracking and some authoring tools have offline tracking features. Rustici Software have an offline player for SCORM.
Implementation Cost/Process
Questions:
- On average or a range, how much does it cost to implement an LRS in an organization say of 1000 employees?
- Seems to be quite a chore to create an LRS. Why is that?
- What guidance would you give for discussing with IT about purchasing an external vendor LRS versus building an LRS internal?
- what is the process for setting up xapi? do companies do it themselves? do they need to work with consulants or vendors to do it? how difficult is it?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes and Mike Rustici
Answer: xAPI was designed to make things as simple as possible for Activity Providers sending and receiving data because historically with SCORM, it’s been content vendors that have not struggled with the complexities of that specification. The world of learning is complex though and that complexity has to be handled somewhere so that burden of complexity has been deliberately given to the LRS. Somebody blogged recently that it took them 18 minutes from sitting down to code to sending their first xAPI statement; it could take 18 months or longer to create a fully conformant, fully featured LRS. See ../building-a-learning-record-store/ for more.
Costs can vary widely as vendors all have different licensing models. You can get started on your own for free in SCORM Cloud or with one of the open source options.
One the other side enterprise wide adoptions with lots of services can get quite expensive. We’ll have somebody reach out to you to discuss your particular needs and give you some better context.
The build vs buy discussion is the same as any other software application. The only additional point I would make that makes this situation unique is that the entire xAPI ecosystem is rapidly evolving and changing. There is likely to be a lot of change to keep up with that might tax a distracted internal team so you might be better off with a vendor that lives and breathes this stuff.
Implementation/big data/what to track?
Questions:
- So, who decides what gets recorded and what doesn’t? How do you filter out “junk”?
Name of Answerer: Mike Rustici
Answer:
The short answer is that the creator of the activity provider ultimately decides what is relevant to track. That developer has a responsibility to send a relevant amount of data.
As a community, we are developing sets of common best practices for which data to report for different activity types. xAPI Recipies define both the amount of data to be reported as well as a common structure to ensure that it is widely interoperable and readable. Read more here.
General
Questions:
- What did you have to do to the content to make it trackable?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: Let’s say I’ve got an innovative learning product that’s an app for Doctors that lets me connect to a patient record system for a given patient and be directed to relevant resources and learning experiences relating to that patient’s symptoms and diagnosis. Great product, but how can I track the Doctor’s use of that tool and see how effective it really is at improving performance and patient outcomes?
The technical process I’d follow here is I’d get the relevant code library from ../libraries and then hook into the events in my app that I wanted to send statements from. My app would need the doctor to log in already (because this is sensitive patient data) so I know who the Doctor is to send statements about then. The LRS settings would most likely be configured at the hospital level by an administrator.
There’s also a design process to follow. What events do I want to track? What data do I need to capture about these events? What will I do with the data? How will I structure my statements? If you’re doing something that’s been done before, recipes will help you with these questions. If you’re doing something new, I will! help you to write your own recipe. Drop me an email.
Rustici Specific
Questions:
- What is the difference between watershed LRS and ScormEngine?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: Watershed is a learning analytics platform that provides actionable insights from your learning and performance data. It’s actually built on top of SCORM Engine and is offered as a cloud based service. The analytics reports provided by Watershed are beautiful and incredibly useful in helping organizations to improve their learning initiatives and business performance. Watershed is not normally learner facing and only supports xAPI, not older learning specifications.
SCORM Engine is an OEM product designed to be incorporated into another learning platform (like an Learning Analytics Platform or an LMS). It provides a core LRS plus industry leading support for older specifications like SCORM and AICC. Many customers use SCORM Engine’s SCORM player to launch and track packages SCORM, AICC and xAPI content.
Some customers use SCORM Engine (or SCORM Cloud) and Watershed in conjunction with one another. SCORM Engine launches and plays content and then Watershed is used to analyse the data from that content alongside data from other sources.
Watershed Specific
Questions:
- What is the most common use of Watershed for analytics? Is there a lot of out-of-the-box capability, or do you have to write your own queries?
Name of Answerer: Mike Rustici
Answer: There is an increasing amount of out-of-the-box capability in Watershed, including a lot around assessments, skills (competencies), badging and correlation discovery. Watershed supports both a lot of configuration and customization. We will have somebody reach out to you to answer your questions in more detail.
CUES Specific
Questions:
- What unexpected insights did cues discover through xapi data?
Name of Answerer: Christopher Stevenson
Answer: We are early in our implementation and have goals for tracking learning, but it is too early to share findings.
Watershed Specific
Questions:
- Where can we see a demonstration?
Name of Answerer: Mike Rustici
Answer: We will have somebody reach out to you to get you set up with a demo.
Recipes
Questions:
- Would it be within the scope of this webinar to touch on what TinCan “recipes” are and how to use them?
Name of Answerer: Andrew Downes
Answer: We’ve got pages on tincanapi.com covering what recipes are and how to use them. If you have more questions, feel free to get in touch!
