Now we will take look on the development side of Elearning
As we know as of now, we need to fallow some standards to maintain the consistency of the media. So to maintain this consistency we use SCORM standards.
SCROM is the packaged data of various Learning Objects (LO’s). These Learning Objects contains various SCO’s (Sharable Content Object). These are again divided into various Assets.
This Asset is the main media of the elearning content. Asset is the combination of some media, text, voice, video etc.
Media can be in any type like image or gif animation or Flash animation. The development of these assets is depending on the level of SCORM standards we are fallowing.
Now days we are fallowing the SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 level to develop the e learning content. Here we need understand the difference in the level of development of course and level of content development. Since Content level and Course developmental level are different.
As of now we have four levels in content development
Level 1
Level2
Level3
Level 4
These four levels indicate the content usage levels in the courseware. In Level 1 and Level2 we use the text and images etc. will be embedded in the asset page. There is no communication between the asset and the other pages. In Level 3, the asset page will be called in to SHELL (Shell is the player of the courseware), each and every asset is called into this Shell. The content is embedded into the asset page. The last level is Level 4, here the Asset and Text will be called into the Shell through XML.
If we fallow Level 3 and Level 4 content development standards the third user can use the content through XML and he can do the changes if he required.
So as of now we know about SCORM standards and Content Development Level’s
Let us look at some file types which AICC (Aviation Industry of Computer Based Training Committee) recommended
The AICC recommends the following standard formats for courseware elements:
Text ASCII
Graphics:
CGM Computer Graphics Metafile
TIFF Tagged Interchange File Format
PICT Macintosh Picture Format
WMF Windows Metafile
DIB (or BMP) Windows Device Independent Bitmap
Motion (Frame-based)
AVI Audio Video Interleaved.
MPEG Motion Picture Experts Group
QuickTime Apple format
FLIC/FLI AutoDesk Animator format
PICS Apple format
Audio
WAVE MS Windows audio
AIFF Audio Interchange File Format (Mac)
AICC Aviation Industry CBT Committee standard formats (DOS)
Logic
Logic elements can be stored in one or more ASCII text files per lesson. The text files may contain programming language code, a scripting language, or SGML tagged text.
The content, in whatever format, must be comprehensive and clear enough to enable a person with a good understanding (of the scripting language or programming language, etc.) to reproduce (without any other information) the exported CBT completely.
Some of the file types we can change upon our convenient or to maintain consistency.
