As learning standards experts here at Rustici Software, we know that the standards like SCORM, xAPI, cmi5, and AICC by and large remain constant and unchanged year over year. Despite their rock-solid foundation in the eLearning space, the environments in which the standards operate—web browsers—are wildly dynamic, always being developed, and that poses challenges for eLearning professionals. That’s why we’re here: we’re committed to innovating our products and building solutions as web environments change to make sure eLearning technologies work well together from implementation to launch and tracking.
Web browsers and eLearning standards
It’s interesting to think that it’s nearly 2020 and we still use the same thing to access and consume content online since the early 1990s: web browsers. Sure, there are more browsers available, more and more devices to make online content even more available and accessible, and we’re more privacy- and security-minded than back in the Netscape Navigator days of the ‘90s. But, the fact remains that web browsers continue to remain a steady constant.
Despite their unwavering foundation in surfing the web, browsers are a dynamic and constantly-changing environment where updates—often under the hood and unnoticed by most users—are made regularly. Web developers are always looking to build and ship new innovations and improvements that make sure these tools that we all use are as efficient, secure, and modern as possible.
But for eLearning professionals, these updates can pose a challenge of accessibility and how their content is launched and interacted with from a learner’s perspective. As more modernized browser requirements get pushed into production, legacy-based functions can be removed or deprecated affecting how courses are launched and even tracked back to your learning management system (LMS).
What does this mean for eLearning content?
As an example, an upcoming update to Google Chrome will remove a key function and may affect customer completion results for Rustici Engine customers. Our engineering team uncovered this update, saw the potential for the problems it would cause with our Rustici Engine customers, and released a patch to fix it.
If you’re a Rustici Engine customer, please reach out to us as soon as possible to get the most recent maintenance release.
We’ve got the learning standards expertise
This isn’t meant to sound scary or to add more testing and development work on your plate. Here at Rustici, we’re here for you as the eLearning technology experts to understand the landscape, how web environments affect learning systems, and handle these headaches so that you don’t have to. Even as browsers and the ways we access learning content online change, we’re committed to making sure learning standards and the tools used to access that content remains our primary focus and that things just work, especially when the environments that learning technology runs in constantly changes.
We’re the experts in standards so you don’t have to be.
We read the specifications and then we read them again. First SCORM 1.1, 1.2, and 2004 in all its incarnations. We collaborated with the industry to develop xAPI in light of SCORM’s shortcomings. We support more than 300 LMS platforms, more than half of the LRSs available, and millions of content deliveries each month. We’ve been doing this one thing very well since 2002 and that’s something we’re proud of.
We openly share resources and solutions.
We’re heavily engaged in the tech and development communities, so as things like web environments or browser requirements affect how learning standards operate, we’re there to quickly test, build, and distribute solutions.
We want you to ask us anything.
Let’s not sugarcoat it: working with standards is hard work. But, it’s our specialty and it’s where we hang our hat. We truly love the work we do and we embrace any all questions around eLearning.
We hang our hats on being able to explain eLearning standards in plain easy-to-understand language and implementing software that allows you to focus on anything other than those standards. If you have any questions about the eLearning standards and technologies or the ever-changing landscape of modern web browsers, drop us a line!
