SCORM Scoring

When implementing Bigger Brains courses in SCORM, xAPI, or AICC format in your LMS, you may have questions about how courses are scored and completed. The handling of scoring varies from LMS to LMS, but this article includes general information about how Bigger Brains courses report learner progress to the LMS.

First, your course may or may not include Knowledge Checks (KCs). KCs are a short series of multiple choice questions inserted after each Section (Chapter) in the course to confirm the learner’s understanding of the material. Most Bigger Brains courses include KCs, but customers can elect to receive their SCORM files with or without the Knowledge Checks.

Bigger Brains courses report two numbers back to the LMS, a Completion percentage and a Score/Grade.

For courses that do not include Knowledge Checks, the Completion percentage and Score are identical, and reflect the percentage of lessons which have been viewed. Note that a learner must view at least 1 minute of video from each lesson in order for it to be counted as completed.

For courses which DO include Knowledge Checks, the Completion percentage is still calculated based on the percentage of lessons viewed. The Score is calculated as follows:

  • 50 points is based on the percentage of lessons viewed.
  • 50 points is based on answering the Knowledge Checks correctly
    • Answering a KC correctly on the first try gives full credit
    • Answering a KC correctly on the second try gives half-credit
    • Answering a KC correctly on any subsequent attempts gives no credit

To illustrate how scoring works, let’s assume the course has 10 lessons divided into two sections, with 3 Knowledge Check questions after each section for a total of 6 questions.

Let’s say the learner views the first section (5 lessons) and answers two of the following questions on the first try and the third question on the second try. At this point the Learner’s score will look like this:

  • Completion: 50%
  • Score: 45.7
    • 25 points for watching half of the video lessons (25 is half of the maximum 50 points for lessons viewed)
    • 8.3 points each for the two questions answered correct on the first try (maxium 50 points divided by 6 questions is 8.3 points per question)
    • 4.1 points for the question answered correct on the second try (half credit)
    • Total Score: 25 + 8.3 + 8.3 + 4.1 = 45.7