Technical Specification of Interskill's Hosted AICC Content Server for 3rd Party LMS Sites
Knowledge Base - Technical Specification of Interskill's Hosted AICC Content Server for 3rd Party LMS Sites
Introduction
The information in this technical note is intended for Learning Management System vendors, and outlines the security and communication parameters of Interskill Learning’s AICC hosted content server.
Technical Architecture
Hardware: Clustered Xeon processors, RAID 5 HD, behind Cisco firewall. Operating System: MS Windows Server 2003
Availability
99.99% uptime
Redundant power supply with generator backup
24/7/365 monitoring
Security
Servers are accessibly by Interskill Administrators only.
No user data is recorded or stored on the content server.
Content is uniquely licensed and deployed per customer.
Communication
Content is accessed via http: or https: depending on the LMS’s security requirements.
If the aicc_url specifies SSL during the initial request, the Java Applet uses an “Authentication Certificate” to allow communication. The only location the Applet will communicate with is the one specified by the LMS in the aicc_url parameter.
Courseware is designed to run within a web browser and as such uses the HTTP based CMI protocol (HACP) as defined in the AICC specification. The other AICC web interface, API-Based CMI communication is currently not supported.
The courseware expects the aicc_sid and aicc_url parameters to be provided to the start page (via HTTP get). The courseware then communicates with the given aicc_url, sending the GetParam command when it starts, and PutParam followed by ExitAU when it completes.
Client Requirements
Courseware uses Macromedia Flash version 5.0 or higher for the multimedia presentation of the learning content.
Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 or higher browsers are the preferred browsers.
Clients need to support Java Applets in their browsers as the courseware uses a Java Applet for the storage of information and communication with the aicc_url.
JavaScript must be enabled.
Crossdomain.xml file must be located on customer’s LMS web server for secure communications to Interskill’s content server.
Graphical Overview
CMI Data Model Variables
The following AICC data model variables are used by the Datatrain courseware. Those that are noted as “non-essential” have no impact on the Datatrain courseware if they are not implemented by the LMS.
[Core]
Lesson_Location (read/write): Bookmarks the exit point of the courseware the last time it was run. Credit (read only) Indicates whether the student is being credited by the LMS system for this lesson. Only the first letter is valid, ‘N’ indicates no credit, while ‘C’ or an unknown value indicates credit mode.
Lesson_Status (read/write) The current student status, which is one of Passed, Completed, Failed, Incomplete, Browsed or Not-attempted. Only the first letter is significant.
Score (written only) The score the student achieved while running the lesson in “credit” mode. Datatrain returns a percentage result for the score. This is calculated by rounding up the result of the number of correct questions times 100 divided by the number of questions asked. The highest possible score is therefore “100”. If there were no questions asked then the score is a blank string (as opposed to being “0”). If the student got 15 out of 20 questions correct for example, their score would be “75”.
Time (written only, non-essential) The amount of time in the student spent in the lesson. The format as dictated by the AICC specification is “HHHH:MM:SS.S”. Note that our courseware does use the optional decimal point digits.
[Core_Lesson]
(read/write) Important information about the lesson for the student is stored here. Correct management of the student’s score calculations will fail if this variable is not implemented by the LMS.
[Comments]
(read only, non-essential)
If implemented, and not an empty string, the contents of this variable is displayed to the student when the courseware starts.
[Student_Data]
Mastery_Score (read only, non-essential) The score as a percentage required for the student to pass the lesson. If blank or not implemented, the default mastery score of 66% is used.
