The major differences in V3 versus 1.2 when working with Articulate to create SCORM files are:
SCORM 1.2
- In all likelihood the most commonly used specification in the industry
- It works on virtually any platform and covers the essential needs of many instructional designers and organizations
- The character length of suspend data (bookmarking) is 4,096 char (4k)
- SCORM 1.2 offers a single value to store course statuses (complete, incomplete, failed, attempted, browsed). This made it difficult to discern if the user passed a final quiz or test since, there is no separation of completed the content and passed the test.
- However, in SumTotal this is addressed via the minimum percent passing score in the activity properties
- Interaction details in SCORM 1.2 have been made write-only
SCORM 2004 v3
- The character length of suspend data (bookmarking) is 64,000 char
- Delivers 3 additional features added
- Sequencing
- Essentially irrelevant as very few LMS’s don’t support sequencing between SCO’s
- Status separation
- SCORM 2004 addresses the issue of discerning if the user passed the final quiz or test by separating completion (complete / incomplete) and success (passed / failed) statuses.
- Read / Write interactions
- All interactions are specified as read/write so the course can look through the status of past interactions, pull the results and avoid confusion in the future.
Does DES have a preference to which version may work better than the other?
DES eLearning Developers default to v3, mainly because of the bookmarking capacity. With larger courses bookmarking can be an issue with 1.2. SumTotal’s recommendation states that SCORM 1.2 is VERY widely adopted and is still the industry workhorse.
When purchasing eLearning content remember:
Every eLearning vendor should make their products compatible with SCORM 1.2. as well as v3
Is there something I should avoid when publishing SCORM Packages?
2004 4th edition – Note: you cannot replace the SCORM package if it’s in this format. You must rebuild the entire course if it must be replaced.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- If you choose a single SCORM, Mobile SCORM Course, or File/Document, you cannot upload a file more than 2 GB
- If you choose multiple SCORM:
- Overall size of SCORM courses you publish in one go, to 10 GB
- Number of SCORM courses you upload in one go, to 500 (considering the file name of each file is not more than 30 characters)