cmi5 CATAPULT

So what does CATAPULT stand for?

A clever (or not so clever) ‘backronym’ that stands for cmi5 Advanced Testing Application and Player Underpinning Learning Technologies. Given that the core of cmi5 is about launching xAPI activities, we couldn’t help but make this work.

The details about CATAPULT

In September 2020, Rustici Software was awarded a contract for the ADL Initiative cmi5 Player and Test Suite (PTS) Prototype Project. This year-long project, in collaboration with key DoD stakeholders and the cmi5 Working Group community, will provide the key pieces needed to help support the adoption of cmi5 and xAPI across the DoD, federated platforms and industry. Outputs from CATAPULT include development tools to help accelerate the use of cmi5 within the DoD and for vendors to incorporate into their products and a conformance test suite to provide validation and governance to support procurement requirements.

Why CATAPULT matters

ADL’s Total Learning Architecture (TLA) project, and modern learning ecosystems as a whole, depend on data portability and flexibility to capture data about learning and training well beyond the LMS. xAPI was designed to support just that, however the transition from legacy SCORM based environments to xAPI is a pretty big leap. cmi5 was introduced to help bridge this gap and facilitate this migration. CATAPULT helps tackle the two barriers to adoption we have seen by providing the resources to add cmi5 support to existing content and applications and the governance needed to validate conformance and support procurement efforts.