the bridge
16 Mar 2015The key is interoperability.
The original goal was to exceed SCORM, especially in regards to the types and numbers of learning activities that could be tracked. In this way, a wider range of learning experiences might be captured.
But the real marvels of xAPI are not in increasing the palette of the instructional designer. As difficult as it may be to develop, the means already exist for one to pull learning experience data from multiple nodes representing multiple means of instruction and performance support - you can conceive of it, so you can design it. The problem is that each of these data streams speaks its own language, has its own grammar, and has no desire to do more - after all, it only speaks to its own kind.
The real trick - the turn - is in the ways that it enables learning ecosystems that consist of wildly varying means of instructional and performance support by empowering these varied nodes to speak to whomever they like. xAPI allows all of this experiential data to be generated off of multiple platforms in a unified, sensible, human readable language.
There are many implications and opportunities in this achievement, but the biggest is to allow you to answer the questions you should already be asking. xAPI is the long-sought, all-purpose, portable bridge between you and the learning analytics data science that you would like to conduct.
TL;DR: xAPI’s solution to interoperability enables the data science necessary to answer questions posed by learning/performance support needs.