SCORM Experts / Practice

A pre-flight list worth having

Six checks, five minutes, most of the failures.

Before a package goes anywhere near a cohort, open the archive and confirm the description file is at the root rather than inside a folder. Confirm the entry point it names exists at that path. Import into a test course on the real platform, not a preview.

Launch it as a test learner, complete it, and check that the platform recorded what you expected under both completion and score. Then close it partway through a second attempt the way a real person closes things, and reopen to confirm resumption works.

Finally, operate it once using only the keyboard. Not thoroughly, just far enough to know whether it is possible at all, because if it is not you want to know now rather than after a learner tells you.

That list fits on a card. Its value is not sophistication, it is that it is done every time rather than when somebody remembers, and that consistency is what converts a recurring class of incidents into a rare one.

The list is also a training device, which is its underrated function. A new colleague who runs it a dozen times has learned, without a course, where packages break and why the steps are in that order. That transfer happens through doing rather than through explanation, and it means the knowledge does not sit with one person, which is the usual condition in teams small enough to have only one person who understands the delivery system.