Overview

During the development of content, there may be a need to associate one or more objectives with an activity. These objectives may or may not be true “instructional” learning objectives, but rather an “internal” objective that that is used by an activity in order to implement a specific sequencing strategy. The Objective Description enables the Content Developer to capture this objective information in regards to the activity for which it maps.

Objective Description

To define objectives for an activity, a set of elements are defined. Objectives for the activity are defined using the Objective ID, Objective Satisfied by Measure, Objective Minimum Satisfied for Normalized Measure and Objective Contributes to Rollup.

When defining objectives for activities, it should be noted that these elements do have default values. The objectives are optional; sequencing does not require an objective to be defined. These default values apply if and only if the elements are not used in defining the objectives:

  • Objective ID: No defined default value, an identifier is required.
  • Objective Satisfied By Measure: Default value of False.
  • Objective Minimum Satisfied Normalized Measure: Default value of 1.0.
  • Objective Contributes To Rollup: Default value of False.

The following table describes the elements for Objective Description:

Objective Description

For sequencing purposes, each objective associated with an activity has a set of tracking status information that allows the progress toward the objective to be measured. This allows for the progress to be tracked and sequencing to be enabled. For more information about the Tracking Model, please refer to section 4.2 of the SCORM 2004 Sequencing and Navigation documentation.

Local Objectives and Shared Objectives

Objectives are represented as a set of locally and globally scoped data items. Each has a set of Objective Progress Information and is considered separate from attempt progress information associated with the learning activities. By default, an activity will only be able to access Objective Progress Information for the set of learning objectives defined for the activity, called local objectives.

Other activities cannot directly reference the Objective Progress Information associated with another activity’s objectives. But an Objective Map may be defined to relate a local objective to a globally shared objective. Activities may have more than one associated local objective and may reference multiple shared global objectives. Multiple activities may reference the same shared global objective, thus sharing the sets of Objective Progress Information.

In this example, all objectives except Objective 5 are local to their associated activities. Objective 5 is a shared global objective shared between Activity B and Activity C.

Objectives Global to System

The Objectives Global to System element applies to the entire Activity Tree and indicates the scope of shared global objective in the Activity Tree. It also implies the lifetime of the sets of Objective Progress Information for the shared global objectives associated with the Activity Tree. However, it does not specify how to manage sets of Objective Progress Information or how resolution of local and shared global objective IDs is performed.

This element contains a boolean (True/False) value. The default value for Objective Global to System, if not defined explicitly for an Activity Tree, is True; shared global objective information will exist per learner, for the lifetime of the learner in the system.

If the Objectives Global to System element on an Activity Tree is defined as False, the learning management system LMS will maintain and resolve shared global objective IDs scoped to only the Activity Tree. Shared global objective information will exist per learner per Activity Tree.

The Objectives Global to System element has no effect when defined on any activity, for it only applies to an Activity Tree.

Objective Map

An objective map describes how the LMS should relate local objectives with shared global objectives. It also relates when the LMS should access referenced sets of Objective Progress Information. An Objective Map is defined by a set of elements. These elements defined characteristics and properties of the objective map. These elements are described in the following table:

Objective Map

Each Objective Map defines the mapping of an activity’s local Objective Progress Information to and from a shared global objective. The Objective Map is the key enabler for sharing Objective Progress Information between activities. There are several rules when applying objective maps:

  • Each activity may have an unlimited number of Objective Maps.
  • By default, no Objective Progress Information is shared between activities. Each activity must define a set of Objective Maps to describe how local objective information is mapped to shared global objectives.
  • The Objective Map is utilized whenever local objective information is altered, as described by the Tracking Behavior.
  • A local objective can only “read” from one shared global objective.
  • Multiple local objectives cannot “write” information to the same shared global objective.

Conclusion

The Objective Description elements of Objective ID, Objective Satisfied by Measure and Objective Minimum Satisfied for Normalized Measure enable the Content Developer to better implement the design of sequencing strategy of the Instructional Designer, giving the learner a varied path through the content