Given the Chinese theme to this Briefing, a treatise on harmony seems like an appropriate way to finish. But before revealing whether "treatise" means "panegyric", we are going to have to wade through some politics, some history and some general geekery.

Computer Managed Instruction (CMI) is the common name for the data model which determines what information can be passed between an ADL SCORM content object and a learning management system (learner names, scores, completion status etc.). The most accessible description of the CMI data model is given in SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 runtime environment books.

Although the SCORM runtime is CMI's best-known incarnation, the data model was originally developed by the Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC), which still produces its own version of CMI with several transport mechanism options, including a "proto Web-service" going under the name of HACP, or "HTTP AICC Communication Protocol". 

While the CMI data model was originally developed by the AICC and has been most successfully marketed by ADL, the standard is owned by a third organisation, the IEEE, in whose catalogue it is known as IEEE 1184.11.2. The IEEE version of the CMI data model improved the AICC original but was never adopted by the AICC, which reasoned that it made sense to wait until other aspects of their original specification were standardised---and this did not occur in the way they expected. 

It is against this background that a Joint CMI Study Group was set up over the summer by a collaborative grouping of LETSI, the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee, AICC and ADL. This informal study group has now spawned a more formally constituted IEEE CMI Harmonization Working Group, which has the necessary authority to update 1184.11.2. Anyone who wants to get involved should email Tyde Richards.

Harmonization (between ADL and AICC versions of the CMI) is essentially a sideways manoeuvre---and it might be said that "if you aren't moving forward, you are moving backward" (the last Chinese proverb for this month). With this in mind, the US SCORM community has identified a list of desirable CMI improvements which should be addressed by the working group. Perhaps most prominent is support for multiple attempts. 

From the point of view of SALTIS members (amongst others), the SCORM community's wish-list is just the tip of the iceberg. Below the waterline are features which would have major pedagogical impact:

• the return of creative product (e.g. for marking, sharing, or posting to an e-portfolio);
• support for activities requiring multiple participants (e.g. games);
• access to custom persistent shared data objects (for example a vocabulary testing tool might want to store a list of words which a particular student finds difficult);
• integrated automatic authentication (or Single Sign-on).

However important, there is as yet no proven way of delivering these requirements. Nor is it realistic to expect robust solutions to be produced ab initio (as SCORM junkies might say) from what will always be a somewhat cumbersome, formal standards process. 

It is therefore not surprising that discussions on the CMI Harmonization WG are increasingly focused on the provision of a robust extensions mechanism. in some senses, this is the single feature that would unlock all the others, supporting the kind of experimental work that will produce robust and durable solutions.

Harmony may be good but innovation is better.