Learning Standards
At Rustici Software, our hope is that we have read and implemented the specifications of important learning standards so that you don't have to. We work hard to be the AICC, SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5 experts so that you can implement our software without the need to become a standards expert. Our product design philosophy boils down to: it just works.
We implement several important learning standards in Engine: AICC, SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5 to name a few. Our support for AICC and SCORM spans more than a decade, so we focus our discussion in this section on the implementation of xAPI, as it represents a sea change from the implementations of AICC and SCORM.
The Experience API (xAPI, or the Tin Can API)
The Experience API (or xAPI) is a learning standard that seeks to resolve some of the acknowledged shortcomings of AICC and SCORM by providing a means to track learning experiences across a much broader variety of platforms and sources.
xAPI enables tracking experiences by describing a way to record statements of the basic form <I> <did> <this>.
Key concepts of xAPI:
- statements -- the expression of an experience implemented in JSON and stored in a learning record store (LRS).
- learning record store (LRS) -- the repository for xAPI statements
- activity provider -- anything that can generate statements and post them to an LRS, whether packaged content similar to previous related learning standards or a physical device with a network connection
There are a variety of REST resources described by xAPI, and Engine implements each of them fully. Using Engine as your LRS, though, should enable a common approach across all learning standards to basic import and launch functionality (where applicable, depending on the nature of activity providers), as well as a flexible approach to reporting.
Generally, we would expect reporting based on data in the LRS to occur against a companion data store designed to support reporting requirements rather than for ad hoc queries to be run directly using xAPI.
For the purposes of packaging, importing, and launching xAPI content Engine implements a companion document to the core xAPI specification that describes a packaging and launch mechanism originally devised by Rustici Software and adopted widely by most major authoring tools. Additionally, Engine also implements support for the new cmi5 specification. This specifications exists as a profile of the xAPI specification that defines a new format for packaging, importing, and launching content that uses the xAPI standard to communicate details back to Engine's LRS. The expectation is that this standard will eventually eclipse the pre-existing companion launch specification in usage within the industry.
Since the xAPI standard emerged from Project Tin Can, there are still references to "Tin Can" or "the Tin Can API" in Engine's implementation.
Your instance of Engine, by default, implements the API at a /TCAPI endpoint.
Configuration
In order to use xAPI in Engine, you must first uncomment or add SystemHomepageUrl to your Engine settings file.
Because xAPI requires that some IDs exist as URIs, we require that a URL be configured for the circumstances where Engine has responsibility for creating xAPI IDs.
Our recommendation is that this setting be unique to and descriptive of your application.
So, for instance, the SystemHomepageUrl for our hosted LRS in Cloud is simply "https://cloud.scorm.com/".
xAPI Statement Pipe
XAPI statement pipes provide the means to automatically transfer statements sent from one LRS to another. Applications include:
- forwarding for users who wish to have their statements stored in their own Personal Data Lockers (PDLs)
- replicating production data in a sandbox LRS
- pulling data in from a remote LRS
In order to use statement pipes, set xAPIStatementPipeEnabled to "true" in your Engine settings file, and then create a pipe using the "xapiPipes" resource on the API.
N.B. The source_url must point to the statements resource, but the target_url must point to the base /TCAPI endpoint (with any extra endpoint information).