As Thailand gears up for e-Learning, addressing issues of connectivity and capacity, developing relevant standard compliant content and has also become crucial. Surasit Vannakrairojn, Managing Director, National On-line Learning Project, Thailand, discusses e-Learning in Thailand, the importance of Sharable Content Object Reference Model or SCORM and NOLP initiatives in developing SCORM standards in an interview with Rumi Mallick of Digital Learning.
What is the market trend in e-Learning in Thailand?
Cannot give you an exact figure of the market because our organization focuses in government sector. In last two years e-learning activity has increased from the government sector, the government is trying to set up an important project on using ICT for education for rural areas. As a part of this project, the government had to buy computers for every school. However, the government has to realize that, providing equipments is not enough, learning content also has to be developed.The government at this stage is still trying to understand the whole concept of e-Learning and how to use the internet for education.Some organizations within government have also started e-Learning research and projects like the ‘Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology’ in schools. Lot of people are trying to understand the concept of content creation and trying to adopt SCORM standards.
What is the SCORM standard? What does SCORM standardize? It is often said that SCORM is still a specification and not a standard?
SCORM is an application profile standard. There are many levels of standards like specifications for applications, and the jury standard, standard accepted by international organization. SCORM is actually a practical specification that has to be issued by some authority that everyone accepts. But before that the private sector has to take the initiative, form a consortium and to write specifications for the products. Many small companies are coming together, but the big companies are still not sure.
The United States government has set up ADL- Advanced Distributed Learning Lab. ADL tried to find a formal specification that the government can use
