This is one of my major concerns/questions with the SCORM specifications. The "assessments" defined in the spec are all necessarily client-side, because they are to transmit the score back to the mother ship (as opposed to systems where student answers are transmitted back to be evaluated on the server side). Furthermore, the API for the transmission is JavaScript!
While this might not be too bad for the original target audience (corporate and DOD training for factual information) where presumably the audience cares about the material enough to value going through the tests, it simply won't work for higher education, even in a homework situation.
It was suggested to me at an ADL conference I attended that for serious quizzing one would need to have a separate application do the grading (server side grading) of the tests. Okay, but still at the end of that, the grade needs to be transmitted back to the mother ship - using JavaScript. No need to check source, it would seem - just send in that you got 100%, and you're golden. Fine, so maybe the grades should be kept on that "other application" as well, but then the supposed sequencing based on scores and adaptive moving through the modules stuff won't work, and hey, might as well put the whole THING in the "other application."
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This is one of my major concerns/questions with the SCORM specifications. The "assessments" defined in the spec are all necessarily client-side, because they are to transmit the score back to the mother ship (as opposed to systems where student answers are transmitted back to be evaluated on the server side). Furthermore, the API for the transmission is JavaScript!
While this might not be too bad for the original target audience (corporate and DOD training for factual information) where presumably the audience cares about the material enough to value going through the tests, it simply won't work for higher education, even in a homework situation.
It was suggested to me at an ADL conference I attended that for serious quizzing one would need to have a separate application do the grading (server side grading) of the tests. Okay, but still at the end of that, the grade needs to be transmitted back to the mother ship - using JavaScript. No need to check source, it would seem - just send in that you got 100%, and you're golden. Fine, so maybe the grades should be kept on that "other application" as well, but then the supposed sequencing based on scores and adaptive moving through the modules stuff won't work, and hey, might as well put the whole THING in the "other application."
Just some things I wonder about.