Troubleshooting your eLearning SCORM package

Most of times, if you are developing eLearning modules for big companies (or even if they are small companies), you will have to package the eLearning module in SCORM, whether it is 1.2, 2004 (any of the editions), AICC or Tin Can.

Whichever it is, I am sure that the LMS person on the client side, will upload the SCORM package to a staging site and test it, or even upload it to the production site and roll it out to the learners, and once in a while, issues will arise such as the eLearning module not bookmarking, not marking completion, not reporting scores and even more.

Then, your client will proceed to ask for your support and describe the issues, for which you must troubleshoot to find the bug and fix it. This blog will now describe the process you should follow if your client find errors with the eLearning SCORM package after testing it on their Learning Management System (LMS).

First, you need to be sure you are using the standard that the client prefers for their LMS. Once you confirm the exact version they need for the LMS. If you find that it’s different, you need to conform your eLearning module to this standard and republish it.
If you are using the correct SCORM version, you need to test it either on your LMS or another tool. Depending on the SCORM version, there are tools that have been released by the SCORM developers that will help you test your eLearning modules. However, be mindful that most of these tools are outdated and might not be supported by the most current browsers.
If you are testing on your LMS or SCORM Cloud (preferably the latter), you can enable the debug feature, which will show you all the messages exchanged between the SCORM package you are testing and the LMS. You will see messages regarding bookmarking, completion marking, current location in the eLearning Module, scores, time elapsed, etc. You can find the issue once you read the debug document, although keep in mind that these documents are long!
Once you identify the issue, for example, if it relates to completion marking, you can then proceed to the authoring tool you used to develop the eLearning module and tweak the SCORM settings and republish.
Finally, repeat these steps until you see that your eLearning module is behaving the way it is expected.