Many e-learning vendors claim their products are compliant with a particular standard, but "compliant" can have many meanings depending on where you sit. It should be the responsibility of the vendor to advise the customer of the standards to which their product conforms.
What experiences, both good and bad, have you had with e-learning standards?
- has a vendor advised you a product is compliant, only to find at implementation that content is not reusable or that interoperability is non-existent?
- where are how can you check a product has been certified, or that a self-tested product will perform?
- which standards are most important/relevant to you?
We are interested in your experience and feedback on this area. Please post any comments!
Carole
One Response
Standards or Guidelines?
Carole
This is a difficult area as your email highlights. As an independent e learning solutions company we have to deal with many vendors and one of the first questions we ask is about adherence to industry standards. Whilst we don’t take their word for it when they say they are compliant, it is enlightening when you discover some don’t even know they exist.
Our view has always been to test the productsourselves on our clients behalf. From a client perspective, the most important thing to find out is what they need the products to do, then we can find out if the product is suitable.
With regard to which standards are important, one of my colleague was on the original AICC committee and these are the most widely recognised at present. However as I am sure you are aware SCORM looks like becoming the future, especially with the talk of Learning Objects and LCMS to integrate the material together.
Standards are a very important area of our industry, but as our industry is still evolving it is no wonder that the standards are to and that people have problems with people claiming compliance.
I went to a seminar recently where the view was expressed that there are no standards, only guidelines. This is why our emphasis is placed on finding out what the client wants and then ensuring they get a product that delivers.
Gareth