Courses & Standards

ActiveManage can host and track industry-standard training content. A course produced in an authoring tool is uploaded, played in the browser, and everything it reports back — completion, pass or fail, score, time spent, even individual question responses — is recorded against the learner so you can report on it.

Standard-agnostic by design

Four packaging standards are supported, and they all record into the same place. A report showing who has completed their fire safety training does not need to know or care which standard each course was built in — which matters the moment you buy content from more than one supplier.

What it is, and what it is not

• It is a player and tracker. Content is created in an authoring tool — Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, iSpring, Rise, Lectora — exported as a package, and played here.
• It is not an authoring tool. ActiveManage does not build courses.
• It is not an invigilated exam. Every one of these standards has the content report its own result from the learner's browser. See What eLearning Results Can and Cannot Prove before relying on scores for compliance.

What gets recorded

• Learner records — one per learner per course, holding their overall standing.
• Course attempts — each individual pass through a course, so a resit does not erase the first try.
• Question responses and objectives — where the course reports that level of detail.
• Sessions — each launch, for when you need to investigate a dispute.

Worked Examples

• Healthcare: mandatory information-governance training, renewed annually, with completion feeding a compliance dashboard.
• Membership body: CPD modules bought from three different suppliers in two different standards, reported in one place.
• Franchise network: onboarding curriculum where each franchisee's staff completion is visible to head office.
• Manufacturer: machine-specific safety modules that must be repeated before a shift pattern changes.

Four standards are supported, plus a fallback for plain web content. You do not choose the standard — it is detected from the package itself when it is uploaded.

The standards

• SCORM 1.2 — the most widely produced standard, and the safest thing to ask a supplier for. One combined status, a score out of a maximum, and time spent.
• SCORM 2004 4th Edition — keeps completion and pass/fail separate, adds scaled scores, and allows far more bookmark data.
• xAPI (Tin Can) — reports a stream of detailed activity records into the built-in Learning Record Store.
• cmi5 — a modern profile built on xAPI, with courses made of Assignable Units and explicit rules for when each counts as satisfied.
• Plain content — a package with no manifest plays as ordinary web content. Useful for video and reference material, but it reports nothing back, so there is no completion or score.

Which should you ask for?

If you have no reason to prefer otherwise, ask for SCORM 1.2. It has the widest tool support and the fewest surprises. Choose cmi5 or xAPI when you need richer reporting than a single status and score, or where content must run outside a normal browser frame.

The practical difference between SCORM 1.2 and 2004

The bookmark allowance. SCORM 1.2 permits roughly 4,000 characters of saved state; 2004 permits around 64,000. A long, branching course can exhaust the 1.2 limit and lose a learner's place. If an author reports that problem, ask for a 2004 export.

Worked Examples

• Off-the-shelf compliance library: almost always SCORM 1.2 — take it as supplied.
• Bespoke branching scenario: SCORM 2004, for the larger bookmark allowance.
• Blended programme with external activities: cmi5, so classroom and on-the-job elements report alongside the online ones.
• Induction videos: plain content, with completion tracked by your own application rather than by the package.

A course package is a ZIP file exported from an authoring tool. It is uploaded through your own course screen, extracted, and registered automatically — you do not have to describe the course to ActiveManage, because the package already describes itself.

What is read out of the package

• The standard and its version.
• Which file to launch.
• The pass mark the author set.
• The completion threshold and any maximum time allowed.
• For cmi5, the list of Assignable Units and the rule deciding when each is satisfied.

Publishing a revised version

Each course in your catalogue has one package. Uploading again for the same course replaces the existing registration rather than creating a second one, which is how you publish a corrected or updated course.

Preview before you publish

A package can be launched in preview, which plays it exactly as a learner sees it while recording nothing — no learner record is created, no result is saved, no completion is reported. Use it to confirm a new package actually launches, and to read through content yourself without appearing in your own completion reports.

If a package will not play

1. Check the detected standard on the package record. One showing as plain content was uploaded without its manifest — usually because the ZIP was made from the containing folder rather than from its contents. This is by far the most common cause.
2. Check the launch file is populated. Empty means no entry point was found.
3. Re-export from the authoring tool, making sure the right standard is selected on export.

Worked Examples

• Supplier sends a course that shows as plain content: ask them to re-zip from inside the published folder so the manifest sits at the root.
• Annual policy refresh: upload the new version against the same course record; existing completions stay intact against the previous attempts.
• Reviewing before a launch: preview the course, check the questions read correctly, then publish.