3 June 2025
What is SCORM and what do you need to know about it?
Jonny McAlister
Head of Customer Experience
Explore everything you need to know about SCORM and how it impacts your L&D programme.
SCORM is one of those terms that is thrown around in learning and development circles, often without much consideration for what it means. If you’re relatively new to e-learning and learning technologies, SCORM is likely to be one of many pieces of jargon you’re trying to get your head around.
In this article, we’ll break down exactly what SCORM is and how it works within your L&D offering. We’ll also explain everything you need to know about how it works.
What is SCORM?
SCORM is an acronym for Sharable Content Object Reference Model. It is a framework of technical standards for creating multimedia learning content.
SCORM standards create a set of rules governing how online learning content and learning management systems communicate with each other. The purpose is so that learning content packages work seamlessly across different platforms.
SCORM has long been the foundation of e-learning content packages. If you wanted to share multimedia content with your learners you almost certainly needed to combine two things: the content authoring capabilities of SCORM and LMS infrastructure to manage and deliver the content you created.
If that still sounds a little complicated, let’s dive a little deeper into the name.
What is a Shareable Content Object?
In the context of SCORM, a Shareable Content Object is any piece of content that you want to be able to share with your learners as a learning resource. The object could be a quiz, video or interactive assessment.
What is a Reference Model?
The Reference Model part of the SCORM acronym means that the model — or technical standards we’ve already mentioned — can be referred to by anyone creating multimedia learning materials.
What do SCORM technical standards mean?
As we’ve established, SCORM standards set out how online learning programmers should write their code to ensure it works well across all learning platforms. It doesn’t dictate design, content or any other aspect of the learning experience. SCORM is purely concerned with functionality and interoperability.
You can think of SCORM as similar to other technical standards you’ll be more familiar with, such as DVD or USB. Both of those technologies have set technical standards to ensure they work in different contexts. DVDs and USB drives are not all made in the same place, don’t all have the same design and each have different content. But the framework of the technology ensures a consistent experience for users across different devices and platforms. SCORM works similarly.
What is SCORM compliant learning content?
SCORM compliant learning content is simply a course or resource that has been coded in adherence to the technical standards discussed above and packaged in the standard format for SCORM content.
Key benefits of SCORM
There are several advantages of working with SCORM packages for your learning content. These include:
Easy integration
One of the most important benefits of SCORM is how easily it can be integrated with your LMS. SCORM is a go-to standard across the L&D industry, which means the overwhelming majority of learning platforms are made to integrate SCORM packages seamlessly.
Consistency across all courses
The ubiquity of SCORM means it’s easy to keep all your courses in an identical format. Both off-the-shelf learning content and custom learning content are likely to be created to the same standards.
Simple learner tracking
While your LMS offers powerful reporting on course completions and other key data, SCORM makes it easy to see how each learner has interacted with multimedia content within a course. SCORM tracks learner progress, completion status and scores, which can be automatically pulled into your LMS analytics.
This generates valuable data for interactions and interventions with learners, as well as for improving learning content in the future.
Reusable content
The way SCORM content is packaged makes it very easy to repurpose. For example, a SCORM quiz format can easily be replicated with new content, colours or other features to be reused in a different context.
The result is that SCORM content is often very cost-effective, particularly if you use SCORM authoring or development time on packages that will serve several uses.
Future-proofed resources
SCORM’s interoperability gives the flexibility to use the same SCORM packages across multiple platforms. This saves time and resources if your organisation has multiple learning platforms in use. It also means reduced costs and less of a headache if you ever want to migrate LMS.
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Get in touchHow does SCORM work?
SCORM content itself is a collection of HTML, JavaScript and multimedia files, just like most of the interactive content you encounter online. The difference with other multimedia content is that the code must be written to SCORM standards.
Once that is achieved, SCORM works by bundling all of the files needed for a specific course or resource into what is known as a SCORM package. A SCORM package can then be uploaded to any LMS to be accessed and used by learners.
How to create SCORM packages
It’s incredibly easy to create SCORM packages for your LMS. Simply follow these steps to make your own SCORM compliant learning content.
Use a SCORM authoring tool
To create SCORM packages you need to use a SCORM authoring tool. This is a piece of software specifically designed to create SCORM compliant content that complies with the SCORM technical standards.
It is also possible to manually code SCORM packages if you have the required coding skills. But authoring tools are the best way of ensuring your SCORM files are compatible with your LMS (and any other platform you might be using in the future).
There are a wide variety of SCORM authoring tools available. Some of the most widely used tools include:
Design your SCORM compliant course
Using your SCORM authoring tool, design the course as you want it to appear on your LMS. This could include videos, quizzes and other interactive elements, along with text and images. Remember, SCORM doesn’t govern the design or pedagogy of the content so you can create content that matches your branding and the learning experiences you want to deliver.
Use your chosen authoring tool to design and develop the course content. Incorporate text, images, videos, quizzes, and other interactive elements to create a rich and engaging learning experience. Ensure that the design is consistent with SCORM guidelines.
Export your SCORM package
The SCORM packages you create can then be exported as zip files. This will include a manifest file that details the structure of your course in a way that can be easily understood by your LMS. This gives it all the information it needs to deliver and track your course correctly.
Import your SCORM package to your LMS
The zip file you exported from your SCORM authoring tool can now be uploaded to your LMS. Once the SCORM package is imported, your LMS will automatically unpack the contents of the zip file to make the course ready for your learners.
Starting using your new SCORM content
Your new course can now be used by learners, though it’s advisable to test that everything is working as intended first. Your LMS will interact with your imported course in the ways specified in the SCORM package.
What can you track with SCORM packages?
We’ve discussed that SCORM packages make it easy to track how your learners are interacting with courses. Let’s look at what data your LMS can extract from run-time communication while your SCORM content is in use.
Some of the key data points you can track using SCORM include:
Interactions
SCORM tracks any interactions with interactive elements of your SCORM content. This includes clicks, drag-and-drop activities, selecting answers and any other interactions you added to your course.
Raw score
SCORM monitors the score a learner achieves within your course. The most obvious example is the number of questions answered correctly in a quiz. These scores will sync with your LMS gradebook to feed into your LMS analytics.
Mastery score
By setting a mastery score, SCORM can track all learners who achieve the passing grade for your course. By setting a minimum score for a pass, you can use this data to automatically award the relevant badges or certifications to each learner. Mastery score also makes it simple to find all learners who passed — or all those who failed — your course.
Lesson location
Pinpoint where within a SCORM package a learner ended their session. This enables users to continue learning where they left off and is also useful for identifying any problematic parts of courses where a large number of learners disengage.
Lesson status
Track each learner’s status in relation to your SCORM course. This will be given as status, such as passed, completed, failed, incomplete, browsed or not attempted. You’ll be able to see which users are engaging, to what degree and how successfully they are doing so.
Session time and total time
SCORM holds data on how long each learner has spent on the course in total, as well as in their most recent session. This is useful for monitoring how long learners spend on a specific course, which can provide insights into the difficulty of the learning content and learners’ engagement levels.
Main SCORM alternatives
Until relatively recently, creating SCORM packages was almost the only practical way of sharing interactive learning.
Nowadays, many of the best LMS options include content authoring tools within the platform. Learning management systems such as Totara Learn, Moodle LMS and Moodle Workplace all incorporate the functionality to create and package multimedia content without third-party software.
The key SCORM alternatives at the moment are:
H5P
The favoured option for content creation in many learning management systems, H5P is an open-source tool for creating interactive HTML5 content. This can be used to create, edit, upload and download interactive learning content, presentations, games, videos and more. It can be achieved using the Totara H5P integration or a Moodle plugin.
xAPI
One of the latest SCORM alternatives, xAPI has won favour for its flexible data model, which tracks learner performance within and away from the LMS. This includes capturing learning data from offline learning, mobile learning and social learning.
cmi5
cmi5 is something of a midpoint between SCORM and xAPI. Based on xAPI, it bridges the gap to SCORM. It does this by defining interoperability rules between xAPI and your LMS. This creates a standardised structure for launch, authorisation, reporting and course structure. cmi5 offers greater security and better mobile learning support than SCORM.
Explore SCORM for your LMS
Ready to see what results you can achieve with your LMS and SCORM? Perhaps you’re wondering whether an alternative would deliver better results for your organisation. Talk to our learning technology experts to get the guidance you need.
