Adventures in xAPI ATDTK2016

Editor's Notes

1. xAPI lets us track learning and experiences that happen outside the LMS. As an instructional designer, are you ready to step up to this challenge? In this session, we’ll discuss the opportunities and the challenges that xAPI (the Experience API or Tin Can API) creates for instructional designers, and offer a few models for taking advantage of this more robust and interesting tracking of the learning process. While the “big 3” developer platforms can publish a course for xAPI, the capabilities go far beyond tracking the experience inside a course. We’ll touch briefly on: Action Mapping and how it can help us identify data needs and sources A taxonomy we can use to compare learning experiences   We’ll wrap up by identifying ways to get started with first projects in xAPI and where to learn more about this new technology.  
2. SCORM is just fine if everything you need to learn and track can be housed in your LMS. And you only learn when you’re connected to the internet and logged into the LMS.
3. xAPI is a simple, lightweight way to store and retrieve records about learners and share this data across platforms. These records (known as activity statements) can be captured in a consistent format from any number of sources (known as activity providers) and they are aggregated in a learning record store (or LRS). The LRS is analogous to the SCORM database in an LMS.   The “x” in xAPI is short for “experience” and implies that these activity providers are not just limited to traditional AICC- and SCORM-based e-learning. With xAPI you can track classroom activities, usage of performance support tools, participation in online communities, mentoring discussions, performance assessment, actual business results, and so on. The goal is to create a full picture of an individual’s learning experience and how that relates to her performance.   “API” stands for application programming interface, a common method for software systems to interact and share data. xAPI activity statements can be generated by activity providers and sent to the LRS, or they can be sent from the LRS to other systems. Many current applications offer APIs to make their data available in other systems, and vice versa.
4. Imagine you are the museum. The Hands-On Museum in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in fact. You compete with all the other field trip options in a 50 mile radius, and a whole host of entertainment options for families. Nearly 1 in 5 visitors to the museum comes as a field trip group. That’s a pretty big chunk of visitors – and revenue – for a museum that gets 70% of its annual budget from earned revenue – people coming in the door, paying admission, buying things in the gift shop. You want to know if kids actually learn on their trip. You want to make that relevant to their curricula so the teachers come back. And you want to make it fun and memorable so the students come back with their families – and siblings – on the weekend. Can you use their school trip to engage them enough to get them to return?
5. So, now that you’ve seen what we created, we wanted to also share with you what we took away from the entire experience.