Best practices publishing SCORM activities

Owned by Netex Sistemas
Last updated: Aug 30, 2018
3 min read

As a general rule we must distinguish between:

  • What are the requirements of a content/activity to be considered completed and/or exceeded. This will depend on how the unit or activity is scheduled. It may be necessary, for example, to visit all the pages or it may be necessary to complete a questionnaire with a certain note. Units/activities created with learningMaker templates have a default performance for completion. To learn how the activities or units created with learningMaker are completed, review the following sections:
    • Tracking configuration in the "Basic Netex" template.


  • What data is stored and how it is displayed by the LMS platform. In other words, when the requirements we have defined for the completion of an activity are met, how and when does the LMS platform show them? In this case, it will depend on the type of tracking standard we use for its publication, that is, the communication protocol we apply between the content/activity and the LMS platform, by default, in all the units/activities created with learningMaker:
    • The student's progress is recorded and stored (screens visited) and when the content is restarted, the last position is retrieved.
    • The answer to questions from questionnaires and/or reinforcement questions is stored. If the student agrees a second time, he will see the answers he gave to the questions.


Despite this common behavior, there are peculiarities about the behavior of units/activities created with learningMaker, according to the publication used, within our LMS learningCentral.

Content published in SCORM 1.2

The contents published with SCORM 1.2. record the tracking of the student in a single field of the LMS, called "suspend-data". On some platforms the "suspend-data" field is limited in size, so if a unit is very long and/or has a lot of questions and the possibility of multiple attempts is present, the tracking may not be properly recorded if the chain of information generated is very long. In learningCentral this field is not limited, so there is no restriction.


Completion of the activity: On most LMS platforms, it is essential to close the unit, i.e. close the browser tab, so that the degree of progress and/or grade obtained by the student can be sent and recorded. Therefore, for content to be displayed on mobile phones, it is recommended to activate the "Close" button (see Section 2.4. of the Basic Netex template). With learningCentral it is NOT necessary to close the activity. The LMS records and displays each action performed by the student (changing screens, answers to questions...) so that, even if the student does not close the activity, the degree of progress and/or the grade obtained is saved.


Contents published in SCORM 2004

The contents published with SCORM 2004 allow you to register more data than SCORM 1.2, without any limitation of space or characters.

Completion of the activity: With Scorm 2004, both in learningCentral and on most platforms, it is essential to close the activity, i.e. close the browser tab so that the degree of progress and/or score obtained by the student is sent and recorded. If the unit is not closed, it is common for tracking to be lost and neither the note nor its degree of progress to be recorded. That is why, for content to be displayed on mobile phones, it is recommended to activate the "Close" button (see Section 2.4. of the Basic Netex template).

Content published with TinCan / xAPI

The contents published with TinCan record all the interactions made by the students, without any limitation of space or characters. It is an ideal publication when we have long units or units with many questions. In addition, it is the only type of tracking that allows you to store tracking of students when they do not have an Internet connection. Therefore, it is the type of publication that should be used to use the contents in learningCloud Mobile.

Ending the activity: In this publication it is NOT necessary to close the activity, i.e., close the browser tab. The content sends each interaction/action of the student (screen advance, answer to questions) and the LMS records in real time the degree of progress and/or the grade obtained. It is an ideal publication for use in mobile environments, where students do not usually close their browser tabs.