As of May 31, 2017 The Florida Board of Chiropractic Medicine approved a change to the Board Rule 64B2-13.004 Continuing Education. The new rule allows for 10 hours on online Chiropractic continuing education, but It is limited to just the General Category.
64B2-13.004 (3) Each licensee may elect to obtain no more than ten (10) general hours each biennium of online continuing education. The online courses shall be competence based learning. Online continuing education providers shall comply with the approval process outlined in subsection (5), of this rule.
Unfortunately, only a few Chiropractic continuing education providers can meet the new criteria.The new rule contains the following regulations that pertain to Chiropractic continuing education providers: competency based learning, use of the Sharable Content Objective Reference Model (SCORM) for security purposes, and include that only the attendee’s registered computer is used for the course, technical assistance available as appropriate to the course format, allow access to the online program to the Board member who is reviewing the course for approval and other criteria.
While many aspects of the new rule are common place in today’s online education world, one is simply outdated and completely misunderstood by the board members that passed the rule. That is the use of SCORM.
SCORM is simply a file format used to package data and deliver it to different systems. In theory it is like a .zip file that contains files and folders or .mp3 that contains music. It is a really powerful tool for anyone involved in online, computer based training, distance learning or eLearning. Content can be created one time and used in many different systems and situations without modification. This plug-and-play functionality can be powerful within an organization but even more so across organizations. Content can be sold and delivered to the user more quickly, more robustly and at a lower price.
The issue is that it doesn’t provide any security. Board members were lead to believe that SCORM would allow for tracking of student activities while engaged in their continuing education courses. These capabilities do exist through the use of a learning records management system, but these are completely separate systems that some education platforms provide and have nothing to do with SCORM.
The other issue is SCORM is already outdated technology. The last version of SCORM was finalized in 2004. It has been replaced by Tin Can API/Experience API/xAPI. This new standard not only includes the files in a plug and play format, but also supports learning records that provide student data wanted by the board members.
The board didn’t leave any wiggle room to implement the new standards or even future standards in their rule change. The spelled out the use of SCORM and it will require another rule change to get this fixed. Until this is done I see only limited options to use online education to get those 10 general hours. They are asking providers to turn back the clock and their online platform to 2004.
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