markdown2scorm

Markdown is a commonly-used text format for documentation. It is easy to write, can be converted to many other formats, and is therefore the basis for a lot of types of output, such as websites, e-books, slide shows, scholarly manuscripts, and others. It is in increasingly becoming the go-to alternative for plain text documentation files, such as the README documents of open source projects. What you are now reading is such a README document in markdown format.

SCORM objects are bundles of content for e-learning. These bundles comply to a collection of standards that, in concert, allow these bundles to be deployed on a variety of platforms. One of these platforms is blackboard, which is a commercial tool but which is more or less the de facto standard for many universities. (For our local purposes it is most relevant that this includes Leiden University but there are many others.)

It would therefore be useful to be able to convert markdown documents to SCORM objects, because this would allow you to:

1. Develop documentation collaboratively using open source workflows.
2. Convert these to SCORM objects.
3. Upload these to a blackboard course and integrate them with other materials, such as:
   • Quizzes and interactive materials, e.g. as developed using adapt.
   • 'Traditional' slides in powerpoint or PDF, e.g. as provided by guest lecturers.

The project pulls together the different components that you would need to accomplish this.

Convert Markdown to HTML

There are numerous options for this. One option is to make a single HTML file, for example like this:

pandoc --from markdown --to=html --css=pandoc.css \
--standalone --out=lecture1.html lecture1.md

In this case, the styling can be much improved by using this pandoc.css

Another option is to make slides, e.g. as follows:

pandoc --to=slidy --standalone --out=lecture1.html lecture1.md

In this case, you may achieve more visually appealing results using some of the other options besides slidy, although the other ones require more supporting file scaffolding. See here

Package the HTML

2. package the html (with all assets) into a SCORM archive using libscorm
3. upload the archive to blackboard (Content > Build content > Content Package (SCORM))