How can I successfully SCORM wrap my custom eLearning course?
There are situations in which you have an elearning module that was developed outside any known elearning authoring tool, for example a custom made HTML5 course, or even documents or videos, and you may be wondering how you can successfully wrap them in SCORM.
First, you need to make sure that your Learning Management System (LMS) doesn’t have the capability of hosting material other than SCORM packages. For example, if you have Moodle as your LMS, you have the opportunity to have different kinds of material as learning activities and you can even set the parameters that mark those activities as complete.
If your LMS only accepts SCORM packages as learning activities, and your elearning module wasn’t developed in an authoring tool, there are always options to make it SCORM compliant.
You need to make sure first, that you know the standard that your LMS accept,s is it 1.2? Or is it 2004 (which version)? Once you have determined this, there are a couple of options to use a wrapper:
Official wrappers: The official wrapper can be found in the ADL website (https://adlnet.gov/scorm#tab-learn) and you can find the files necessary for all the standards.
Pipwerks wrapper: There is an unofficial, easy-to-use wrapper called pipwerks (https://github.com/pipwerks/scorm-api-wrapper) that can be used if you find the official wrappers somewhat convoluted. By easy-to-use, I mean that the code has been simplified, compared to the official wrappers, and is probably less confusing. Also, since this is a open source project, it can be updated at any time by the community.
Also, don’t forget that not only the wrapper (which is usually a JavaScript file that let’s you communicate with the LMS) is necessary to make your eLearning course SCORM compliant, but you also need to have the file structure that will conform your SCORM package to a specific standard, and most importantly, you need the manifest, which is an XML file that lets the LMS know how the course and its files are structured. Visit the official SCORM website (https://scorm.com/scorm-explained/technical-scorm/content-packaging/) to learn more about how to properly package your eLearning course, depending on the standard you choose.
