There are a number of eLearning standards that are supported by various authoring platforms and learning management systems, and they all have pros and cons. Oftentimes you’ll need to make a call on which standard best supports the goals of you and your client, taking into account such things as the delivery format, whether tracking is required and to what degree, how the course will be consumed, etc. So it’s important to understand the peculiarities of each eLearning standard, and which one to choose for specific tasks.
We’ve conducted a thorough analysis of all existing standards for online learning, and we’re sure it’ll help you understand the differences between them and make an informed choice for your next project.
Jump to the Comparison Chart of eLearning standards below if you want to learn about their key differences briefly. Now let’s take a closer look at each of the standards.
AICC is a very early eLearning standard. It was created in 1988 by the Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee (AICC) to standardize the materials and technology used to train airline workers.
The AICC standard uses the HTTP AICC Communication Protocol (HACP) to communicate between a learning management system (LMS) and the course content. The HACP methodology is quite straightforward, using an HTML form and simple text strings to transmit information to and from the LMS.
How AICC works
The original AICC standard is still used by many organizations for legacy reasons, so it’s unlikely the standard will completely disappear anytime soon, but for all intents and purposes, it’s a dead standard.
Given that AICC is extremely old by technology standards, is there anything it can still do better than the newer standards that have followed? Actually, there are a couple of areas where AICC still has an advantage:
There are several weaknesses to AICC as a technical standard, as you would expect from a standard of this age:
Although AICC remains interesting as a way to gauge how far eLearning standards have come, it’s not worthy of consideration as it’s an outdated standard and there are newer, better options available.
Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), was first published by the US government’s Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) project in 2000, and is the de-facto standard for eLearning content. The standard, is, in fact, a set of technical standards that were designed to address the issues of its predecessor, AICC.
SCORM provides the communication method and data models that allow eLearning content and an LMS to work together. All the training materials for one course are packed into a SCORM package, a .zip archive that contains files in a specific hierarchy. To deliver your e-courses via an LMS, SCORM has its three main components that work together :
How SCORM works
SCORM 1.2 became the default technical standard to deliver eLearning via an LMS, and has massive support both from authoring tools and learning management systems. SCORM 1.2 was superseded by SCORM 2004.
There are not that many differences between SCORM versions; they are summarized below:
For a more detailed overview of the differences between the two versions, take a look at this SCORM 1.2 vs SCORM 2004 comparison.
Both SCORM 1.2 and 2004 continue to be the default standards used by many in the eLearning industry, and have widespread support within modern software tools. SCORM remains popular for corporate training.
As SCORM is still the current default industry standard, there’s a range of benefits. If you want to create a simple working eLearning course or have a wealth of pre-made content to choose from, it’s hard to beat SCORM as a technical standard. Here are some of its strengths:
The newest version of SCORM (SCORM 2004, 4th edition) was released in March 2009, so it’s been almost a decade since SCORM was last updated, and this is apparent in a number of key areas:
SCORM is a good eLearning standard if you’re looking to get eLearning courses up and running quickly. But if you do decide on SCORM, be aware that it does have limitations that will also grow over time. It’s a competent but minimal solution that may make it more difficult to use more interactive and engaging courses in the future. Unless you have organizational reasons for using the legacy 1.2 standard, then always go for SCORM 2004.
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The Experience API, or xAPI for short, or Tin Can ( Tin Can API) to use another name, is a newer eLearning standard that lets you collect data about a wide range of ‘experiences’ a learner has, both online and offline. This API (Application Programming Interface) captures data about a learner or group’s activities in a consistent format and from many different technologies.
With xAPI, people learn from interactions with developed content, with other learners, and much more. These interactions can happen anywhere, and signal an event where learning could occur. And all of these actions can be recorded with xAPI. When an activity is to be recorded, the application sends secure statements to a Learning Record Store (LRS).
A Learning Record Store (LRS) is a unique feature of xAPI that records all of the statements made and shares these statements with other LRSs. An LRS can exist on its own or can live inside an LMS.
How xAPI works
The Experience API is modern, simple and flexible, and does away with many restrictions associated with older standards like SCORM. With support for mobile learning, simulations, virtual reality, complex games, real-world activities, experiential learning, social learning, offline learning, and collaborative learning, it looks set to be a powerful standard in the coming years.
With a ground-up design made specifically to release modern learning developers from the shackles of outdated standards, xAPI has some excellent benefits.
xAPI is a new standard and promises a lot. To a large extent, it does deliver, at least technically, however using its features to achieve actual benefits and ROI on training is something that needs more work to fully realize. Some things to consider are:
xAPI offers exciting new ways to track and manage training content that isn’t limited to strictly eLearning-specific software: authoring tools and LMSs. If you plan to use these features now or in the future, it’s an excellent standard. However, if you are mainly developing and delivering traditional eLearning content via an LMS, the extra configuration and very different way of doing things may mean you are better off sticking to a more well-established standard like SCORM.
cmi5 is the result of efforts starting from an AICC working group and brought to release by pioneers of the xAPI community under the stewardship of ADL. The scope of cmi5 is precise and is aimed at defining how to handle xAPI activities in launched scenarios, like playing a course in an LMS.
cmi5 introduces a file named `cmi5.xml`. This is similar to a SCORM manifest file as it contains XML metadata that describes a Course Structure as a series of container blocks and Assignable Units (AUs). This file is provided to cmi5 compatible launching systems (e.g. LMSs) for import. An AU is the launchable content of the package, and the content assets can be included inside the package or hosted remotely.
It was released for production use in June 2016.
As of now, cmi5 has been adopted by many platforms. The standard is much simpler than older and more ambitious standards such as SCORM 2004. The fact that it simplifies and improves the use of xAPI by restricting some functionality and by adding constraining rules is a plus for most potential users. In other words, cmi5 is a bridge between SCORM and xAPI that takes the best of these two standards for LMSs.
How cmi5 works
cmi5 essentially takes a lot of the headache out of defining things in xAPI, so it seeks to improve upon that standard with the following features:
From a technical standpoint, there are really no downsides to cmi5. From a functional perspective, the only negatives to this standard would be the result of legacy infrastructure and tools.
Although cmi5 is still a work in progress, both consumers and authoring tool vendors have bought into the standard, and all large authoring tools now support cmi5. Unless you have other considerations that steer you towards another standard, perhaps for legacy reasons, cmi5 is a great choice in 2022 and for the future.
Common Cartridge is a standard that was developed in 2008 by IMS Global Learning Consortium, a non-profit consortium of educational and commercial organizations, in order to ensure interoperability between various pieces of online educational content and its possible repositories.
IMS Common Cartridge facilitates interoperability in a given eLearning environment, i.e., it makes third-party content in a platform-specific format available for instructors without any additional effort. Thus, it’s a standard for the hassle-free exchange of learning materials between various publishers rather than a standard for tracking training data.
Common Cartridge enables users to manage different types of content, stream it from a third-party system in real time, and see all changes without reuploading content or hiring a team of developers to set up needed integrations. At its core, Common Cartridge (CC) has so-called Thin Common Cartridge (TCC), which can be represented as follows:
The Thin Common Cartridge connects different systems through internal and external links with learning tools interoperability (LTI) protocols. Processed data is represented in a series of XML files in versions 1.0–1.2 or a single XML file in version 1.3. You can then import the resulting package into any LMS that supports the Common Cartridge standard.
How Common Cartridge works
IMS Common Cartridge went through several updates, and its version 1.4, released in 2020, takes into account feedback and requirements from the field, especially the K-20 sector. Nowadays, the majority of US-based publishers who design courses, quizzes, and serious games for academia, support Common Cartridge. IMS members point out that Common Cartridge addresses the needs of both academic and business institutions, thereby serving learners at each step of lifelong, continuous learning.
Common Cartridge is neither the competitor of nor an alternative for SCORM, and wasn’t designed to replace it. It focuses on interoperability between various eLearning tools and systems, thereby presenting its unique advantages, such as:
Being a joint point for different systems and vendors, Common Cartridge still has a limited number of compatible authoring tools (check the list here) and LMSs (check the list here), as well as seemingly less detailed reporting capabilities, compared to other standards.
Common Cartridge makes learning content customization and exchange efficient for teachers and instructors, and improves the availability of third-party content, which is critical both for users and publishers (vendors). It is great for supporting popular classroom activities like discussion boards and helps to move them online fairly easily.If you have content in SCORM, you can convert it to Common Cartridge seamlessly. But if you want to rely on Common Cartridge alone, it’s advisable to ensure that your LMS or authoring tool is compatible with it.
Here are a couple of questions about eLearning standards that people often seek answers to. Check them out to get a clearer idea of what eLearning standards are and which one is the best.
What is an eLearning standard?
An eLearning standard is a set of rules and requirements of how data is being processed, exchanged, and delivered when learning content is exported to various online platforms.
Which eLearning format is better than SCORM?
Let’s narrow down the choices and define the better option between the most popular formats today: SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5. As cmi5 takes the best aspects of both SCORM and xAPI and surpasses them in terms of simplicity, we can confidently state that cmi5 is better than SCORM. Yet, it is not yet as widespread and is being adopted slowly.
The table below shows a quick view of the capabilities of all the eLearning standards we’ve reviewed.
| AICC | SCORM 1.2 | SCORM 2004 | xAPI | cmi5 | IMS Common Cartridge | |
| Course sequencing | N | N | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Completion, spent time, pass/fail tracking | N | N | Y | Y | Y | N |
| Advanced tracking (games, simulations, informal learning, offline learning, etc.) | N | N | N | Y | Y | N |
| Single scores | N | N | Y | Y | Y | N/A |
| Multiple scores | N | N | N | Y | Y | N/A |
| No web browser required | N | N | N | Y | Y | Y |
| Mobile-friendliness | N | N | N | Y | Y | N |
By now, you should have a clearer idea of which eLearning standard will suit your needs or those of your organization. Whichever standard you decide to go with, you’ll need an authoring tool that publishes to your chosen standard with as little fuss as possible.
The iSpring Suite authoring tool allows you to publish courses in any eLearning standard: AICC, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, xAPI, and cmi5 are all supported straight out of the box. To get started authoring with iSpring, just sign up for a free 14-day trial.