Certification: Do LMS Vendors Really Care?

Posted on April 6, 2006 by Tom King

I noticed that only 1of leading LMS vendor has their current product certified by AICC. Only one major LMS has a current SCORM 2004 Certification. Read on to find out who IS certified. Curious who isn’t certified right now for either standard? As of this writing I don’t see Oracle, Saba, SAP, or SumTotal when I look on the AICC site (AICC Certified Products), nor do I see any of those products on the ADL SCORM 2004 Certified Products list.

Hmm, sorta makes you wonder why companies have problems integrating their content with their LMS.

Not that the issue is entirely on the LMS side. I don’t see many content vendors with current AICC Certification either though. No current AICC certification for Articulate, DazzlerMax, Lectora Publisher, and ToolBook to name a few. There are quite a few I didn’t name too.

Content tools fare much better with SCORM 2004 certification , where you will see that Adobe Breeze, Adobe Captivate, Articulate Presenter, EEDO ForceTen, OutStart Evolution and ToolBook are all listed.

Time to run off to Masie’s LMS 2006 Users Group that is running right now. It is no wonder that this event sold out.

PS- Plateau has both AICC certification and SCORM 2004 certification currently. The only one out there as far as I can tell.

About Tom King

Tom King has a master's degree in Instructional Design and 15 years experience developing and managing elearning materials. Tom has been active with many elearning technology specification groups, including ADL SCORM, AICC, IEEE LTSC, and others. He served as AICC Communications Chairman and workgroup leader for the PENS specification. Tom was instrumental in early implementations of LMS specifications for LAN and web-based systems as an early AICC advocate and founder of Solis, maker of Pathware (acquired by Macromedia and later transferred to IBM as LearningSpace 4). Tom continues to collaborate with colleagues from a variety of companies offering enterprise-class elearning solutions.
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2 Responses to Certification: Do LMS Vendors Really Care?

  1. enterprising1 says:
    July 29, 2008 at 11:07 am

    Tom,
    Any updates to LMS vendor SCORM and AICC certification? We are shopping for an LMS…and want ours be solidly certified.

  2. Tom King says:
    July 29, 2008 at 2:59 pm

    @enterprising1

    There hasn’t been much progress in LMS vendors seeking AICC certification. Here is the current AICC Certification page:
    http://www.aicc.org/pages/cert.htm#products

    For AICC certification, it’s basically down to Saba and Oracle (Peoplesoft ELM). AICC is always silent on whether or not certifications are in process until they are finalized, so if there are some pending we don’t know.

    SCORM 2004 3rd edition LMS certifications seemed to peak in the October-December 2007 timeframe.

    Interestingly, there seems to be a recent surge (Spring/Summer 2008) in content certifications for SCO units and courses.

    You can now find certified SCORM 2004 LMS and content products here:

    http://www.adlnet.gov/scorm/certified/index.aspx