Testing SCORM?

Some LMS (notice for SABA) expose both API (SCORM 1.2) and API_1484_11 (SCORM 2004) at the same time, when launching SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004 courses.
So, suppose you publish with Captivate to SCORM 1.2, then import to the LMS. When the Captivate SCO is launched, it begins to find API_1484_11, and it find it. But it is a SCORM 1.2 SCO, so it causes some errors, for exemple, SCORM 1.2 session_time format is sent to the SCORM 2004 API.

Franck.

Agreed with jbradley's suggestion as the first thing to try.

When an LMS launches a SCO, the spec dicates that the SCO should work
it's way up the browser windows to find the API. So first it will check
the browser window containing the SCO itself. If it's not there, it'll
check the browser window which launched the SCO, and continue to go up
the parent tree until there's nothing left to check.

As far as I know, Captivate does this properly. More often then not, the
problem lies with the LMS not exposing the API correctly...though I
can't give any specific situations/examples.

The SCO does not contain the API. The SCO contains functions (generally
javascript) which looks for the API as mentioned above. The LMS *must*
provide the API to handle communication to and from the SCO itself.

If you're finding that you must wrap the SCO in an API, which then can
find the LMS (or test product's) API, then something is wonky - that's
not how it should work. Hopefully jbradley's suggestion is the easy
answer. If that doesn't work, I'd ask the LMS vendor how their API is
exposed and why Captivate can't find it by the standard tree walk.

The ADL Test Suite;
http://www.adlnet.gov/downloads/downloadpage.aspx?ID=155
Is probably the best tool to use to test such things, since ADL authors
the SCORM spec. If you're spec'ing SCORM 1.2, or want to look at other
possible tools, check ADL's product download page:
http://www.adlnet.gov/downloads/DownloadsSearchResults.aspx?Category=Products

The LMS we use does not do anything to the SCO it presents. I can't
imagine that any LMS forcing a wrapper over the content would be a good
idea...
Erik



adoucette wrote:
> Hi,
> I need to be able to test Captivate's SCOs locally to figure out the SCORM API
> and calls, but no luck so far.
--
Erik Lord
http://www.capemedia.net
Adobe Community Expert - Authorware
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/
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Hey Ari,

Try looking at this thread to see if the suggested changes fix your problem:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=67&catid=469&threadid=1235585

Specifically, the references to changing how Captivate looks for the SCORM API by setting the g_intAPIOrder and/or g_nAPI variables to 1.

Hopefully, changing one or both of those values will fix the issue you're having.

I'd start with g_intAPIOrder, since that one only changes how Captivate looks for the API. I believe the second one is a hardcode that overrides the result of that search.

Does anyone have any suggestions about this?
I downloaded the captivate_scorm_output.zip from Andrew Chemey's article "Output Options in Captivate - Part 3: SCORM Tracking". I've tried the 1.2 version in the Rustici TestTrack application. It will work only if I set the "Wrap SCO Window with API" option. OK, so I guess the API from Captivate isn't getting used here?
I tried my own SCO in the Rustici TestTrack and, sure enough, it also only started tracking scores if I set the "Wrap SCO Window with API" setting. (the setting's tool-tip explains: "When a SCO is launched in a new window, some poorly implemented SCORM content can have trouble finding the SCORM API. This setting will wrap an empty frameset around the SCO window which presents an API that relays calls back to the real SCORM Player API.")
Does this mean that any LMS has to similarly wrap a Captivate SCO for it to work?
Thanks,
Ari