Interoperability


The ability to take instructional components developed in one location with one set of tools or platform and use them in another location with a different set of tools or platform.

An example

Your web-based project management course is popular and effective. Your counterparts at State and Tech would like to use it, and you're happy to let them. You used "Brand X," an authoring system that produces SCORM-conformant content which works just fine on your school's management system. Over at State they use "Brand Y," also SCORM conformant, so getting the course up and running is fairly straightforward. At Tech they have a custom system pulled together over the years from open source components. When they tried the course at Tech, you could see the pages, but all the navigation was broken and there was no ability to track student progress or record their answers.

Because of SCORM, your materials were interoperable with other conformant systems. Other systems require unique custom solutions that only work with the system they were designed for and are therefore not interoperable.

SCORM features that support Interoperability

The SCORM addresses the Interoperability requirement by standardizing communications between management systems and content and specifying critical details about how content is aggregated and packaged. There's a common way to initialize and finish content, and content can only be launched by the management system, not by other Sharable Content Objects. SCORM provides a standard means and vocabulary for the exchange of data between the materials a learner is working on and the management system that is monitoring their progress.