• SCORM integration

SCORM integration

If you administer a SCORM-compliant LMS, you can start offering Drillster's functionality today by utilizing the Drillster SCORM wrapper.

Drillster SCORM integration

The Drillster SCORM integration consists of a custom wrapper around the standard Drillster player widget which can turn any drill or test into a SCORM object. This object can be uploaded into any compatible LMS, and allows users of the LMS to access the learning object seamlessly.

The SCORM wrapper takes care of the following:

  • Account provisioning – if the LMS does not yet have a Drillster account, an account is created on-the-fly based upon the data provided by the LMS.
  • Group membership – the LMS user is made a member of the appropriate groups within the organization account. This ensures that users have access to the relevant content, either via the LMS or by logging in into Drillster directly.
  • Single sign-on – users do not have to worry about logging in into Drillster as this is taken care of by the SCORM wrapper.
  • Synchronization of results – drill proficiencies and test progress are synchronized with the LMS in real time, giving LMS administrator immediate insight into the progress of users.

Prerequisites

💡 Important

Before you can use the SCORM integration, it needs to be configured for your organization.

In order to make use of the Drillster SCORM wrapper, please make sure that:

  • Your LMS is SCORM 1.2 compliant. At this time SCORM 2004 is not supported.
  • You are the administrator of a Drillster license account.
  • Your users make use of an evergreen browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari) or IE11.

If this is in order, please contact Drillster Support to set up the SCORM integration. We need the following information:

  • The URL from which you will be starting the SCORM packages. If unsure, you can do an initial test by starting a Drillster SCORM package. This is guaranteed to lead to an error message (because SCORM hasn't been configured yet at this point), but it allows us to look up the URL. Please make note of the time you start the test package.
  • The type of account IDs your SCORM server will send (see below).

Creating a Drillster SCORM package

Turning a drill or test into a SCORM package is very simple. The first step is to ensure that the drill or test is added to a group in Drillster. If you have not already done so, please create a group in your Drillster organization account. Once a group has been created, drills and tests may be added to it.

It is important to keep in mind that Drillster SCORM packages are always created in the context of groups. LMS users opening a Drillster SCORM package will automatically receive access to the group, and therefore have access to all drills and tests placed within that group.

From the group's drills or tests list, select the desired learning object. Open the dropdown menu and select "Generate SCORM package".

Select learning object

Then proceed to click Download to generate the SCORM package for the selected learning object and group. A ZIP file should start downloading momentarily.

Generate SCORM package

Finally, go to your LMS and upload the generated ZIP file as a SCORM package. Please consult the documentation of your LMS for help on installing SCORM packages.

Pricing

Use of the Drillster SCORM wrapper is included in the standard license fees.

Account provisioning

When a user starts a SCORM package for the first time, a Drillster account will be set up for the user automatically. To do this, the only information that is used from the LMS is the user’s name and one or more identities of the user. An identity can be an email address, or unique identifier that is typically issued by the LMS or the company operating the LMS, e.g. a personnel number.

Name and locale

The Drillster SCORM wrapper takes the user’s name from the SCORM field cmi.core.student_name. This is a mandatory field.

The account locale is copied from the Drillster organization locale.

Identities

The SCORM wrapper supports two types of identities: email address and third party ID. A third party ID is a unique identifier for the user that is issued by the system or organization that is using Drillster. In other words, it is not issued by Drillster, hence the name third party. The third party ID must have the following properties:

  • Unique – it identities a single user
  • Immutable – it can't be changed
  • Non-reusable– it will never be assigned to other users

At least one identity must be provided. The decision to provide an email address, a third party ID, or both, is up to you. However, Drillster recommends providing both. Using only an email address as identity quite often proves problematic, because in reality an email address is not always immutable. A user's email address might change due to a user's changed marital status, department, or for other reasons. Using only a third party ID can be problematic in some situations, too, because users don't always know this ID themselves. This might lead to problems when communicating with Drillster support. Also, Drillster does not have the option to communicate to the user by email, which is necessary to send e.g. password reset emails.

It is strongly recommended to provide both a third party ID and an email address.

Third party registration

In order to use third party IDs, a third party must first be registered in the Drillster platform. Please contact support@drillster.com to do this. You will be asked to provide a referrer URL. This is the URL that will be used to start the SCORM packages in your LMS. Drillster will link this URL to your third party for security reasons. Only SCORM packages that are started from this URL are allowed to use this third party. Since SCORM provides only very limited security, not verifying who started the SCORM package would allow anybody to set up or log in to an account that is identified by your third party ID.

The URL you provide should uniquely identify your third party. If your SCORM packages are all started from e.g. “https://www.acme.com”, this URL will suffice. If you are using a hosted LMS, or one that is shared with other organizations, a URL like “https://www.sharedlms.com” does not uniquely identify your third party, so a more specific URL is required, e.g. “https://www.sharedlms.com/acme”.

Upon successful registration, Drillster will provide you with the identifier of the third party, e.g. “ACME”.

Identity SCORM fields

The Drillster SCORM wrapper uses two SCORM fields to obtain the user's identities: cmi.core.student_id and cmi.comments_from_lms. Which type of identity is stored in which field is not important; Drillster will collect the identities from both fields, regardless of their type.

The cmi.core.student_id field can be populated with the user's email address or the third party ID (e.g. “12345”).

The cmi.comments_from_lms field can also be populated with the user’s email address or third party ID, but the format is a bit more complex. An email address should be populated like:

{
  "student_id": [{
    "type":"EMAIL",
    "value":"name@example.com"
  }]
}

A third party ID should be populated like:

{
  "student_id": [{
    "type":"ACME",
    "value":"12345"
  }]
}

where “ACME” is the identifier of the third party that you received after registering the third party, and “12345” is the user’s ID.

Frequently asked questions

I do not see the option to generate SCORM packages.

Your account may not have the permission to generate SCORM packages. Please contact support@drillster.com to set this up for you.

Do I have control over who can access my SCORM packages?

A generated SCORM package is tied to the selected group and learning object, and it will function in any SCORM-compliant LMS. Therefore it is important to limit access to the generated ZIP file to LMS administrators only.

Can I disable a SCORM package after I have given it to someone?

No. Once a SCORM package has been created, it will function for as long as the drill or test is available in the group. The only ways to stop an existing Drillster SCORM package from functioning is by removing the learning object from the group, or by deleting the group or learning object. Removing group members will not help, as they will automatically be re-added by the SCORM integration.

Can I use the SCORM integration for anonymous tests?

Yes. Please contact support@drillster.com to set this up.

Is there support for pass/fail evaluation for tests?

Yes. If a Drillster test definition is set up to use any of the pass/fail test score transformers, the corresponding test result is automatically translated to PASSED or FAILED status codes in the LMS.

Is there an example?

Certainly! Please download our example SCORM package.

Caution: do not upload this package into your own LMS!

Alternatively, you could also use the reference SCORM player over at 🔗 SCORM Cloud.

What happens if a student already has a Drillster account for the same email address?

The existing account is given access to the group. However, SCORM users are always given a restricted session with access only to the learning objects belonging to the connected organization. Other content is not accessible during a SCORM session.

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