Overview

Each learning activity in the Activity Tree has a collection of sequencing state information associated with it for each learner. This sequencing state information is called the Tracking Model.

The purpose of the Tracking Model is to capture information gathered from the learner’s interaction with the content objects associated with learning activities.

How the Tracking Model Applies to You

How the Tracking Model Relates to the Run-Time Data Model

The Tracking Model is related to the Run-Time Data Model. It all ties together in that the Run-Time Data Model comes from the Sharable Content Object (SCO). The Tracking Model in turn comes from the Activity Tree, and tells the learning management system (LMS) what to do with certain pieces of information that might be available from the SCO.

Primary and Non-Primary Objectives

Every activity defined in the activity tree may have one or more objectives. Each activity in the activity tree has a primary objective. A primary objective is explicitly defined by using the primaryObjective element. If an objective is not defined explicitly, then one is assigned by default.

If the activity has multiple objectives, one must be defined as the primary objective. The primary objective is the objective that is used by the sequencing engines to help determine status of the parent activities (i.e. through the rollup process). All of the other defined objectives do not contribute to the rollup process.

Tracking Status Information

The Tracking Model defines the following sets of tracking status information:

  • Objective Progress Information

    Objective Progress Information describes the learner’s progress related to a learning objective. It is important to understand that a learning activity can have more than one objective associated with it.

  • Activity Progress Information

    Activity Progress Information describes a learner’s progress on an activity. This information describes the total learner progress across all attempts on an activity.

  • Attempt Progress Information

    Like Activity Progress, Attempt Progress Information describes a learner’s progress on an activity. However, Attempt Progress Information describes the progress on an activity per each attempt.

  • Activity State Information

    The Activity State Information describes the state of an activity on a per Activity Tree per learner basis.

SCOs and the Tracking Model

SCOs communicate information to an LMS about the learner experience.

When a SCO calls Terminate(), some of its Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM®) Run-Time Data Model elements are “mapped” to the Sequencing Tracking Model Elements managed for the SCO’s associated activity:

  • The SCO’s “cmi.exit” value identifies if the Current Activity is “suspended”.
  • The SCO’s “cmi.success_status” value affects the Current Activity’s primary objective’s “Objective Satisfied Status”.
  • The SCO’s “cmi.score.scaled” value affects the Current Activity’s primary objective’s “Objective Normalized Measure”.
  • The SCO’s “cmi.completion_status” value affects the Current Activity’s “Attempt Completion Status”.

SCOs and the Tracking Model

The activity’s other, non-primary objectives are also affected by the SCORM Run-Time Data Model Elements associated with the SCO:

  • The SCO’s “cmi.objectives.n.success_status” affects the Current Activity’s objective—that shares the same ID as “cmi.objectives.n.id”—“Objective Satisfied Status”.
  • The SCO’s “cmi.objectives.n.score.scaled” affects the Current Activity’s objective—that shares the same ID as “cmi.objectives.n.id”—“Objective Normalized Measure”.

If the activities contain associated objectives and these objectives are shared with other activities, then this data will be used and applied to these other objectives.

Global vs. Local Objectives

Each activity has its own set of learning objectives defined for it called “local” objectives. Each activity has these by default, no explicit association to objectives is needed. The Content Developer can associate objectives to acitivities by defining them in the activity tree (via the Content Package Manifest). All objectives defined for an activity (explicitly or by default) are local to the activity. This means that the activity is aware they exist and only that activity’s SCO can affect them.

A local activity can be defined as a "global" objective. This global objective then can be shared with other learning activities. If an objective is declared to be global (via XML in the Content Package Manifest), then the Tracking Model Elements associated with the objecitive are available to other learning activities that share that same "global" objective.

Objective Mapping

Objective maps need to be defined in order to share objective status information between activities. For any defined objective, on any activity, any number of objective maps can be defined. Objective maps can “read” and/or “write” local objective status “from” and “to” a global objective.

Objective Mapping

The ID of a global objective defines a set of managed objective information, the same four fields used for local objectives. A sequencing implementation will manage these sets of objective information across activities and across a course for a learner, using the ID to reference state. There is no defined naming convention for global objectives, but they should be unique. SCORM does not define a standard unique naming scheme.

“Read” Objective Mapping

If a “read” objective map is defined on a local objective and the referenced global objective has a known status, then the global objective status is utilized for Sequencing and Rollup Rule evaluations. If a “read” objective map is defined and the global objective has an unknown status, then the local status is utilized for Sequencing and Rollup Rule evaluations. “Reading” the status from a global objective does not change the local objective state.

“Write” Objective Mapping

If a “write” objective map is defined, then the local objective status will be copied to the global objectives each time an attempt on the activity ends. For example, if the SCO says “passed” and the primary objective is “written” to objective “X”, objective “X” will become “satisfied” when the SCO terminates.

Putting It All Together

The Tracking Model and mapping objectives are key components in tracking, capturing and communicating information about a learner’s interactions. For more detailed information on the Tracking Model and objectives, see the SCORM Sequencing and Navigation documentation that can be downloaded at the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Website (www.adlnet.gov).