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PowerPoint to SCORM Build Specification
Send the legacy deck and what it is meant to teach, and get the tracking specified before anybody opens an authoring tool.
PowerPoint has no SCORM export and never has. The list of formats it can save as is published, and it runs from Open XML through PDF, MP4, RTF and a dozen picture types, with nothing resembling a course package anywhere in it. So every conversion goes through a third-party tool, and the default path through that tool produces one linear module with a single completion flag on the end. The deck is now in the LMS and it evidences nothing.
Contract Review Fundamentals is 62 slides serving nine competencies from a job task analysis. Converted the default way it becomes one shareable content object, and the run-time data it can write back is a completion status and a session time. Two facts. Neither of them is evidence for any of the nine competencies, which is the thing compliance is going to ask for, and no amount of rebuilding the slides fixes it after the fact.
The specification comes first instead. Sixty-two slides split into five objects of 14, 11, 13, 12 and 12 slides, each mapped to a named objective. Fourteen interactions specified with their type, their correct response and the competency each one evidences. Seven of the nine competencies get at least one interaction. Two of them get none, because nothing in the deck can assess them at all, and that gap is the most useful line in the whole document.
Two competencies with no assessable moment, found before the build rather than after
Coverage is the finding that only appears when interactions are mapped to competencies rather than to slides. Fourteen interactions across nine competencies sounds generous until you check the mapping and find 77.78 percent coverage, with two competencies taught in the content and unassessable in the package. There are only two honest responses: author an assessable moment for each, or take them out of the stated objectives. Discovering that during specification costs a paragraph. Discovering it during an audit costs the course.
Granularity is the second thing the default path decides for you. A single 62-slide object resumes only where the content itself stores a location, so an interrupted learner can lose up to 61 slides of progress. Split into five objects the worst case is 13 slides, which is 78.69 percent less rework, and it is the same content in the same order. The split also gives each objective its own completion state, which is what turns a course-level pass into per-competency evidence.
The manifest is where all of this becomes real, and it is a file rather than a setting. A conformant package saves its structure into an imsmanifest.xml at the root of the content, and that file carries the object list, the resources and the sequencing rules. Specifying the split, the objective identifiers and the interaction identifiers before the build means the manifest gets authored once, rather than being whatever the authoring tool emitted and then patched.
How it works
Send the deck
The slides, the facilitator notes and any handout, plus the competencies it is meant to serve.
Split the objects
Slide ranges grouped so each object maps to one objective the LMS can track separately.
Specify interactions
Type, stem, correct response and the competency each one evidences, one row per interaction.
Check the coverage
Every competency tested for an assessable moment, and the ones with none named explicitly.
What you get
- The deck split into shareable content objects, with the slide range each one covers
- One named objective per object, with the identifiers the manifest and the LMS will use
- Every interaction specified by type, correct response and the competency it evidences
- A coverage matrix showing which competencies the package can and cannot evidence
- The run-time data elements each interaction writes, so the reporting is known in advance
- What the legacy deck lacks for each gap, stated as authoring work rather than as a note
Common questions
Can PowerPoint really not export SCORM?
No, and the list of formats it does support is published and enumerable. Open XML, PDF, MP4, RTF, several picture formats and a template type, with nothing that produces a course package. Every route to SCORM goes through separate software, and the specification is what stops that software's defaults deciding what the course can measure.
Why specify before building rather than after?
Because the tracking decisions are structural. Which objects exist, what identifiers they carry and which interactions write results are all baked into the manifest at build time. Changing them later means re-authoring, and the usual outcome is that nobody does, so the course ships with a completion flag and no evidence for any competency.
What is wrong with one big module?
Two things, and both are measurable. It resumes badly, since an interrupted learner can lose up to 61 of 62 slides against 13 in a five-object split. And it reports one completion state for nine competencies, so the LMS cannot tell you which part a learner actually demonstrated.
Does it write the questions?
It writes the specification, including the stem, the interaction type, the correct response and the competency evidenced, which your subject matter expert then corrects. Where the source material is a person rather than a deck, SME to training conversion is the one that gets the content out of their head first.
SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004?
It depends what your LMS accepts, and the specification changes accordingly. SCORM 2004 gives you objectives and sequencing, so per-competency evidence is native. SCORM 1.2 has interactions but a weaker objective model, so the same coverage needs more objects. The output states which elements are available under the version you chose.
Where do the competencies come from?
Ideally from a task analysis rather than from the deck's own headings, because a deck's structure reflects how somebody once presented it. The job task analysis and competency pack produces that list, and the training programme pack is where the whole curriculum around it lives.
What if we are moving a whole catalogue rather than one deck?
Then the split and coverage work still applies per course, but the package movement is a different problem. LMS migration and package conversion plans the transfer and reports what will not survive it, which is worth running before you specify rebuilds for anything.
PowerPoint to SCORM Build Specification
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