In the first part of this As series we have discussed the different hardware options you need to consider as delivery methods for your content. If you missed it you can find it here. We will now discuss software considerations for delivering your content.
CenarioVR® is very flexible in its ability to publish in a variety of different formats depending on the hosting system.
Your content may be hosted on a learning management system or learning experience platform, or you may wish to host your content as part of a website or include it as a web object in an eLearning course created with an authoring tool such as ELB Learning Reader®. Additionally, CenarioVR offers powerful hosting features that you can tap into in addition to or in lieu of your LMS for delivery of CenarioVR content.
The platform you host on will be a determining factor in the type of data you can collect and the hardware used for delivery.
In this article, we will discuss each publishing type with its advantages and disadvantages, as well as the advantages of using your own LMS over CenarioVR as a hosting platform.
First, let’s discuss the types of publications.
Post types
Html5
Scenarios built in CenarioVR can be published in HTML5. This publication can be embedded as code into a website or course created with another traditional eLearning authoring tool, such as Lectora or Storyline.
HTML5 doesn’t include any sort of analytical tracking capabilities, so it’s not ideal as a standalone publishing format if the data is important to you. However, if your purpose is to include your scenario in a larger learning experience or to use your CenarioVR content for public purposes, HTML5 is adequate.
SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004
When using a learning management system, SCORM is your format of choice. CenarioVR supports both the most popular compliants, SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004, so it doesn’t matter which version works best on your LMS you’re covered.
The benefits of using SCORM are pretty easy to see. It’s a format you’re probably already using with other content, and so you can use your existing LMS system which greatly reduces the cost and hassle when introducing a new system to your organization.
From an analytics standpoint, SCORM is a bit limited on the data it provides. Yes, you get your completion status and overall score information passed to your LMS, but you miss out on the richer data that’s available with other publishing options.
Overall, SCORM is a good starting point for most organizations, but it definitely has some limitations, particularly if the data is important to you.
xAPI and cmi5
xAPI and cmi5 are what are considered to be the next level of publishing standards for eLearning content. They enable rich data monitoring that provides granular details on student performance through the use of xAPI statements. Something you may not know is that every activity your student is performing in CenarioVR already has an xAPI instruction attached to it, without you doing any additional programming. Why not tap into this powerful information?
The biggest disadvantage of xAPI and cmi5 right now is that not all LMS or LXP systems have the ability to track xAPI instructions. You may need to integrate with a third-party Learning Record Store to track this information. The simplest solution to tap into this powerful xAPI data from CenarioVR is to host it on CenarioVR itself, which we’ll talk about in a moment.
Windows offline
In some situations you may find that your students don’t have access to a stable internet connection. This can cause issues with the performance of your VR content due to lags or loading issues. When this happens, you may want to consider publishing your content in Windows offline mode. This generates the scenario as a standalone application that can run natively on any Windows PC.
The benefits here are simple, no internet connection dependency. However there is a rather big trade-off. Since you wouldn’t have the ability for individual students to log in with credentials, you wouldn’t be able to track individual user performance at all. If they were taking this scenario for compliance reasons, they would have to report themselves some other way. However, if this training is simply of help at the moment, on-the-job refresher training is a very suitable option.
CenarioVR
All of the options described so far rely on you having your own platform for hosting content and tracking student experience. As mentioned above, CenarioVR has a second aspect. Not only is it a powerful and simple VR authoring tool, but it’s also one of the few platforms built from the ground up to host and deliver VR content. It can be a powerful way to complement your existing content delivery platform.
Let’s talk about some of the benefits of using the CenarioVR platform to host your content in more detail.
Track student performance in real time
When hosting on the CenarioVR platform you can see exactly what your students are experiencing at the moment they are experiencing it. As noted earlier, every interaction a student has in a scenario is tracked via xAPI data all the way back to the Learning Record Repository (LRS) built into CenarioVR. This data is fed to the CenarioVR Analytics dashboard which allows you to see this information in real-time, which gives you a deep understanding at a glance of exactly how your students are performing and where they might be struggling. Giving you a complete view of the effectiveness of your immersive experience.
Ultra-fast content delivery
While your LMS may work well with CenarioVR SCORM content delivery, not all platforms are designed to deliver 4K video or VR content, so your students may experience delays or other complications due to this fact. The CenarioVR platform was built from the ground up to deliver VR content with an integrated high-bandwidth content delivery system that ensures content delivery has the power and speed to deliver the optimal experience for your students.
Optimal headphone experience
All of CenarioVR’s HTML-based post types (HTML5, SCORM, xAPI, cmi5) are WebXR-enabled, which means that even when you run them in a browser on a headset you can experience them in full VR. However, this means that the headset is still dependent on an internet connection.
By hosting your content on CenarioVR you get access to the CenarioVR viewer and mobile applications that allow you to download scenarios to your device. It means that rather than relying on a constant internet connection to deliver your content to your students, you’re using hardware capabilities to drive the experience. Using your headset hardware or mobile device allows for a more optimal viewing experience for your students.
When you host your content on CenarioVR you have access to two additional publishing options.
CenarioVR Live
CenarioVR Live allows you to generate a URL link that can be fully public or credential protected and available only to selected users via a private link. This is definitely the easiest way to publish your content.
CenarioVR Live is also the type of publication that allows your students to access content on headsets and mobile devices through the native CenarioVR app on those platforms.
Publishing via CenarioVR gives you the easiest way to share your content as it is done via URL. However, when you post your content privately, you still have the ability to control who has access to your content and track real-time analytics in CenarioVR’s analytics dashboard, giving you a granular view of your students’ performance.
One thing to note here, you have the possibility to publish publicly even without accessing the CenarioVR platform. When you post publicly, your content is added to the Public Scenarios section of the CenarioVR platform so that anyone with a CenarioVR account can access it. I recommend caution and that you are sure you want to do this before posting. That said, you can pull your content from public scenarios at any time if it’s accidentally published.
Hybrid SCORM
So you want to use the CenarioVR platform to deliver your content so you have the extra power and analytics capabilities, but you don’t want your students to have extra access, and you still need to use your own LMS to track all of the completions of the course . It’s not a problem. This is a very common situation that arises, so we have created a special publication to help.
When you publish to Hybrid SCORM in CenarioVR, a small SCORM 1.2 file will be generated which can reside on your LMS. When your student accesses this file on the LMS, the module actually streams the content from the CenarioVR platform to your system. As far as your student is concerned, nothing different or special is happening. But from an admin perspective, your content gets an additional performance boost and track more analytics on CenarioVR.
This is honestly the best option when using an LMS with CenarioVR. Unlike the CenarioVR Live publishing option, there is no need to add users to the CenarioVR platform. All users accessing your content via SCORM file will be instantly tracked and you will be able to see their activity on the dashboard. Pretty cool right?
These are your basic publishing options from CenarioVR. However, I will also note that you have a direct publishing option to our other learning platforms, Rockstar Learning Platform and Arcades™ by CenarioVR. We also have a similar direct integration when publishing to our partner Docebo’s Learn LMS. However, these options are only available to customers who have access to both CenarioVR and the corresponding platform.
Hopefully, this gives you a good idea of what type of posting best suits your needs, as well as the benefits of hosting on the CenarioVR platform. If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are always here to help.
