After completing a project taking 15 months with a team of developers, a different client with the same aircraft type required a similar course generated quickly. This required new visuals of the aircraft to be generated specific to the client’s branding on their aircraft. There are steps which can be implemented using built in tools from various software to reduce the amount of time taken to reproduce the visuals, but this still requires a large amount of time to recreate all the visuals. With such a large project a more manageable, flexible and efficient system is essential to provide the same high standard of quality in a shorter time period. The one click rendering solution described here was our answer to this problem.

Below is a fictitious example,
A large course based on the aircraft ‘Airbus A310’ for ‘Czech Airlines’ is generated. In the near future another airliner, ‘Lufthansa’ requires the same course but wish to have their own aircraft branding. This requires a change to the graphics and animations but not the content so the work is less but still substantial for a project of this scale as each artist is required to modify the settings for each visual.

Project Structure

Below is a graphic displaying the project folder structure we adhere to, this is important for successful management of the automatic regeneration of the visual files.

Process

Below is a simple diagram showing the stages of each process.

Software

Currently 3ds Max is being implemented into this process, we use this software to create our computer generated imagery. There are two things which happen at this stage.

First, data (name of the projects, lessons and page numbers) already stored within the database is sent to the software via a script for the user to make some choices using a user interface (see diagram below). These choices will determine where the file is positioned within the logical structure of the database.
Secondly, once the file is ready to generate the visuals specific information from the file is sent to the database where it is stored in a logical hierarchy based on the first stage where this information can be accessed.

Database

The database stores all the information from the different software for later extraction, this data is stored within a database so the data can easily be duplicated/modified as required.

User Interface

This is a user interface that extracts data from the database and displays it in a logical, user friendly manner. Here the user can quickly update/duplicate or modify the data within the database.

The user can make several changes to the data stored within the database such as names, settings and paths. This data can be modified on a per entry basis (a single 3ds Max file), or a project wide basis (hundreds of max files). For e.g. The user wishes to change where the visual files are stored on the PC once they have been recreated, this would normally require each 3ds Max file to be changed one at a time, instead we could make the same change within the user interface just once and this would apply this change to every 3ds Max file entry stored.

Extraction

When the necessary selections/changes have been made in the user interface the user can start the process of regenerating all the visuals files based on each of the software files, or save the settings to a batch file to be executed at later date.

Warm Up!

I have provided a brief explanation of what the tool is and the basic principles of how it will work. In the near future I will release further documentation of a technical nature on each process in detail. Although this tool is currently in development and many aspects are working I am excited at the possibilities of what this tool can do when in a development environment.

If anyone has any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Alan Porter

alan.porter@acns-group.com

The Brief

Produce a demo of an interactive procedural manual showing a prospective engineer how to dismantle a piece of equipment to replace consumable parts.  The end product would have to provide the facility for multiple languages. It should take the user through the procedure step by step, highlighting the appropriate text and showing how the components should be dismantled. Any notable parts must display a part number when rolled over, and an indication of what tools are required and any advisory notes must also be displayed.

The plan

Create a Flash framework, into which would be brought, individual SWFs to illustrate the removal of components.
Create an XML file which would hold all of the instructional text for each procedure and references to the appropriate SWFs and MP3 narration files. This would also contain the advisory notes, and references to tools required
The end product needed to be as dynamic as possible. This was only going to be a demo of one part of the process. The thinking was that we could cover more aspects all within the same framework. There also needed to be the facility for multiple languages..

The Hurdles

The XML

The first thing to figure out was how to parse the XML using Flash’s very capable XML tools. This turned out to be very straightforward indeed… once I’d figured out that all of my blocks of texts were actually child-nodes of their parent, and not values, I was away. There were some scary nested if statements and references to children of children of children so to speak but it all works well. The XML, and the parsing script for that matter, evolved as I got deeper into the project, finding a different way of laying things out, and I also managed to make it a bit more dynamic so that, in theory, I could present more than just the procedure in the same framework.
That’s the beauty of XML… I simply added another tag that wrapped around the whole document, and the <procedure> became a child, allowing me to add more children should the need arise..

Dynamic References

The next hurdle to get over was how to refer to variables and objects dynamically. As I alluded to earlier, I’ve spent many years programming in Authorware, and in that tool… it’s really easy. I was sure that, in the end, it would be just as easy in Flash… I just needed to find the solution.
I needed to be able to refer to the sound objects dynamically, depending on what step I was at in the sequence and the code below let me do it.

//Dynamically create sound objects by looping through the procedure.steps.audio array
for (i=0; i<procedure.steps.audio[currentPage].length; i++) {
  this["Sound_"+i] = new Sound(this);
  this["Sound_"+i].loadSound(procedurePath+languagePath + "/" + procedure.steps.audio[currentPage][i],false);
}

Zooming

It was decided that the user should be able to zoom in on the animations so as to better see how some of the more intricate removal procedures were carried out. This threw up a couple of issues. Zooming the loaded SWF was relatively easy, I just increased the “xscale” and “yscale” values of the container movie clip but this simply enlarged it to the right and down. This was easily masked, but of course we had to allow the user then to position the “Window” over the component they wanted to see. We tried Scroll bars, but I was having a real struggle to get them to work, and I wasn’t entirely convinced that it was the best way, so I decided to let the user simply drag the SWF to the desired position.

This approach worked fine, but the rollovers for the part numbers were all part of the individual SWFs and by giving the container movie clip a “Mouse Down” action, it disabled the part number rollovers. A fair bit of head scratching later, we put a “whole Screen” button into each of the individual SWFs in a layer below the rollovers that sent the dragging event, as it were, to the framework using the code below… problem solved. We now had a zoomable, draggable container movie clip in which to load our animations.
on (press){
  if (_root._container._xscale !=100){
    _root._container.startDrag();
  }
}

Navigation

The navigation in this particular project threw up a couple of issues. The procedure that we presented in the demo had a number of stages, but in each stage there were a number of steps.
We didn’t want to have different controls for moving between the stages(other than by clicking on the next block of text as had been specified in the brief), so the next / previous buttons either moved on the loaded animation or moved to the next / previous stage depending upon which part of the sequence the user was at. This caused a little confusion when tested, so the buttons became movie clips with symbols based upon a media player Play, Scan and Skip buttons. At the start of the sequence, the forward button shows the single arrow  to play, and the previous button shows the single arrow and line to skip. As the user moves forward in the sequence, the previous button changes to the double arrow . Then, when the last step in the sequence is reached, the next button becomes the arrow and line  to skip to the next stage.

Summary

In short… we could have got the job done a lot quicker by hard-coding the object references and the links, and sticking to a linear flow in the timeline, but this exercise was always about setting up a framework that we could potentially use for the entire project. Moreover, it was a very useful learning exercise in the fact that I managed to get to grips with Flash’s excellent XML parsing capabilities and produce some quite dynamic code that can hopefully be used on the full project,  and other similar ideas of dynamic, modular programmes.

So… Am I now an expert in Flash?

Not by a long way, but I am much more comfortable in the timeline based environment, and I’m looking forward to using the code we’ve built for future projects.

What does “SCORM” mean?

SCORM is an acronym for “Sharable Content Object Reference Model”.

What is SCORM?

Well according to WikiPedia, SCORM is : “a collection of standards and specifications for web-based e-learning. It defines communications between client side content and a host system called the run-time environment which is commonly a function of a learning management system (LMS). SCORM also defines how content may be packaged into a transferable ZIP file.”

SCORM is a therefore technical standard and in no way governs how the content is delivered to the learner. You could (unfortunately) have the worst eLearning content in the world that is still totally SCORM conformant!

The other point to take from this is that SCORM only covers web based delivery. If your content is not going to be web delivered, then SCORM is not for you. The Aviation Industry CBT Committee (www.aicc.org) also has some eLearning standards or guidelines, parts of which were reused for SCORM incidentally. SCORM incorporates portions of the AICC specification via the IEEE Data Model and API Standards. There is a relevant part at the AICC for file-based deployment of elearning and that may be more relevant to you if you need to deploy that way. More information is on the AICC website at: http://www.aicc.org/docs/tech/cmi001v4.pdf

What is the main benefit of adopting SCORM?

Well, according to Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL: www.adlnet.gov), the current ‘owners’ of SCORM, there are numerous benefits to adopting SCORM. ADL quotes:

Accessibility: The ability to locate and access instructional components from multiple locations and deliver them to other locations. For example, a content author can search the ADL Registry and identify relevant content that has already been developed by another organization and deploy that content on any LMS that complies with the same version of SCORM to learners anywhere in the world.

Interoperability: The ability to take instructional components developed in one system and use them in another system. For example, content packaged for delivery in one SCORM-compliant LMS could be loaded into another LMS that complies with the same version of SCORM for delivery to learners.

Durability: The ability to withstand technology evolution and/or changes without costly redesign, reconfiguration, or recoding. For example, upgrading to a new computer operating system should have no impact on the delivery of content to learners.

Reusability: The flexibility to incorporate instructional components in multiple applications and contexts. For example, e-learning content designed for one organization can be redeployed, rearranged, repurposed, or rewritten by other organizations that have similar learning needs.

Taken at face value, this is all very good, but not necessarily strictly true if you are looking at the eLearning content side. As I have said before, SCORM does not address the content, so if you upgrade a learner’s operating system then that could mean the content will no longer work as advertised, and the fact that the courseware is SCORM conformant will not insure you against such problems. I guess an example is needed for clarification:

Content developed in Authorware 7 (now at end of development status with Adobe) that used digital video content viewed through the inbuilt digital movie ‘icon’ and packaged as either SCORM 1.2 or 2004 conformant content works well when deployed to a learner using Windows XP. If the learner views the same content in Windows Vista then there is a strong possibility that the videos will no longer play. This of course, is not the fault of SCORM, but due to the different way that Windows XP and Windows Vista make use of the Windows Media Player internally that the Authorware content is attempting to leverage. This does go to show though, that having SCORM conformant content does not necessarily insure you for durability.

The 3 parts of SCORM

There are three parts to SCORM 2004:

The Content Aggregation Model, the Run-Time Environment and the Sequencing and Navigation specification.

Content Aggregation

The Content aggregation section specifies how content is packaged and described so that an LMS can automatically read information from it using an XML system.

SCORM specifies that content should be packaged in a self-contained directory or a ZIP file called a Package Interchange File or PIF. The PIF contains an XML file named imsmanifest.xml which is the manifest file that describes the content of the PIF. This file must be at the root of the folder or zip file. The manifest optionally divides the course into one or more parts called Shareable Content Objects or SCOs . A SCO is the smallest element in SCORM that is tracked / launched by the LMS.

Run Time

The Run-Time section specifies how content should be launched and how it communicates with the LMS. It is based primarily on JavaScript (ECMAScript).

To be SCORM conformant an LMS must launch a SCO in a web browser window or frameset and must make the SCORM API available for the SCO to use to communicate with the LMS launching it.

The API exposes functions that allow two way communications to happen between the SCO and the LMS.

A SCORM conformant LMS must implement the following eight functions to allow a SCO to communicate with it:

Initialize (“”)
Terminate (“”)
Commit (“”)
GetValue (parameter1)
SetValue (parameter1, parameter2)
GetLastError ()
GetErrorString (errorcode)
GetDiagnostics (errorcode)

A SCO is not obliged to make use of all eight functions to be conformant. The only requirement is to initialize with the LMS and Terminate at the end for conformance to be demonstrated.

Sequencing & Navigation

The Sequencing section specifies how the learner can navigate between parts of the course (SCOs). It is defined by a set of rules and attributes written in XML.
Through the sequencing and navigation specification the SCO author is able to:

• Determine which navigational controls should be provided by the LMS to the learner using the SCO
• Specify prerequisites in terms of SCO that must be completed before this one.
• Give some parts of a course more weighting in terms of a final score.
• Select randomly a different subset of SCOs to be shown on each new attempt. This is useful for creating random testing modules.
• Take the user back to learning that has been failed for remedial learning activities.

What is the current status of SCORM 2004?

The current version of SCORM is SCORM 2004 3rd Edition. It is a stable document suite that is ready for implementation. SCORM 2004 4th Edition is currently in Beta testing. The changes between the 3rd and 4th edition are largely clarifications on edition 3’s requirements.

How can I tell my content is SCORM conformant?

In SCORM terms, conformance is deemed by self testing. The way to do that is to download and use the SCORM test suite from ADL. You can download this from:
http://www.adlnet.gov/Technologies/scorm/SCORMSDocuments/2004%204th%20Edition/Test%20Suite.aspx

Summary

SCORM 2004 has a number of advantages to offer to both consumers and developers of eLearning as well as to LMS vendors as it guarantees that your courseware will play nicely together.

I hope this short overview has been enlightening. If you want any assistance with your SCORM issues, please get in touch.

Ilias is an open source learning management system. It is a complete system to be used on a web server to create, display and track many forms of e-learning/computer based training and also utilise many related web 2.0 technologies.

ILIAS website

Why have we chosen to use ILIAS?

Besides it being full featured and able to fulfil most requirements of an LMS, the main reason for us is the free open source licence. This gives us the flexibility to change anything we need to and the only cost we pass on to clients is any customizing and development time on our part. There’s no cost to pass on for the LMS itself. We believe that makes it a more competitive choice. There are other open source alternatives but ILIAS is the only SCORM certified one currently and it covers all the features we’ve required and been most easily customizable.

What can ILIAS do?

ILIAS is a brilliant web based delivery platform for e-learning lessons and courses developed in pretty much any tool you can think of. ILIAS even has it’s own inbuilt lesson development (SCORM compliant) tools.

Personal Desktop:

This isn’t merely a one way “broadcast” of lessons. Each user can have various individual tracked data such as lessons attempted, scores achieved in quizzes, prerequisite conditions etc.

Message asking user by name whether to resume a lesson where last exited:

From an educator/trainer’s point of view there are endless ways to review test scores, time taken for lessons, attempts made etc. Also automatic issuing of certificates, multiple methods of communication (messaging, email, forums, webcasts), wikis, surveys.

What does our work with ILIAS consist of?

There are two main things that our work and time consists of with regards to ILIAS:

1. Installation

ILIAS is a php/mySQL based package (since version 4.0.0 it also will also work with Oracle databases), so installing can vary depending on whether it requires integrating with an existing php/mySQL web server set up or setting up a dedicated server/host from scratch. We’ve installed it successfully many times on both Linux and Windows based servers. Each has presented it’s own challenges depending on version of ILIAS, Linux flavour/version, XAMPP version, PHP version etc. At time of writing ILIAS is at version 4.0.2.

2. Customizing

The bulk of time/work may be customizing/skinning ILIAS to fit into a client’s requirements (this requires text, code, graphics and ILIAS setting changes):

We have developed our own documentation for customizing since many things have changed in the internal workings of ILIAS since version 4 and we’ve had to determine how to change and what to change for any particular desired effect and we should now be able to drastically change the appearance of an ILIAS installation to suit a client’s individual needs.

3. Other

Of course there’s all sorts of other bits and pieces we’ve done from ensuring lessons integrate properly (SCORM compliance of ILIAS is important here) with lessons we develop ourselves (created in anything e.g. Authorware, Xerte, Flash), to creating bespoke php code (e.g. a Certificate Request program) when a very specific feature isn’t yet available for ILIAS. And also supporting the Admin and feature use of the ILIAS application itself.

Andrew