PGLS experts were early contributors to the Tin Can functional specifications. Based on our experience with clients in the training and education industry, most organizations were looking for ways to repurpose their existing materials quickly and easily into a blended curriculum. The Tin Can API moves beyond the SCORM API by allowing various learning resources such as documents, video and audio, as well as off-browser activities such as mobile learning via apps and games, to be tagged and managed without the time and expense of repurposing into SCORM conformant Learning Objects (LOs). This blog post By Dario De Angelis was originally posted to the Docebo LMS eLearning blog:
http://www.docebo.com/docebo-e-learning-blog/
APIs, or Application Program Interfaces, are basically a layer of code placed between two softwares that allow them to “speak” to each other and exchange information, even if they were developed by different people or in different programming languages.
Most software producers develop their own APIs and the relative documentation in order to encourage other programmers to create new integrations and to add value to their own users. Basically software developers are encouraged to develop their software APIs to make sure that it doesn’t remain a “lonely planet” and increase the target audience.
In this blog post I wanted to focus on the Tin Can API. Also known as the Experience API or xAPI, Tin Can is a special program interface that applies to the eLearning sector, allowing SCORM packages to interact with a Learning Management System (LMS).
Developed about 10 years ago by Rustici Software, the Tin Can API allows learning content and Learning Management Systems to interact and to store data about the user learning experience. Through this interface, the system can store data in a very simple way: “I did this” (subject, verb, object). Using this approach the system can store all kinds of data on the activities (object) performed (verb) by the users (subject) of an eLearning platform, making the whole system much faster than before.
What the Tin Can API means for eLearning:
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