Why should I implement the xAPI?

Learning technology specifications have been around for a long time, and they serve a good purpose. They ensure that content creators and content consumers are able to work well together and with ease — but they’ve had their flaws. The Experience API builds on over a decade of industry-wide experience, relieving many of the biggest drawbacks of previous standards. It’s a simple but powerful specification that many companies and products have adopted already, and it will be the backbone of learning technology for a long time to come.

What’s in it for me?

As a specification, the Experience API opens up a world of data you can share with and receive from other tools. By sharing, everyone benefits. You can provide more relevant suggestions to learners because you know the activities they have completed. You can participate in a much larger learning economy than has been possible before. No matter where the experience happens, it can be recorded with Experience API.

It feels good to help everyone be better.

Perhaps you’d rather see the xAPI from a particular perspective that matches you a little better. Check out some “stories” about the Experience API:

How are different organizations and products using xAPI?

Adoption looks different for an organization’s L&D department than it does for a learning technologies vendor and it looks different again for a vendor of a product that’s traditionally sat outside the realm of L&D. Follow the links below to be guided through what adoption means to your particular type of organization:

Or if you prefer to watch a video, take a look at the webinar recordings showcasing organizations and vendors who have adopted!

More reasons for xAPI…

Learning is not an action. It is a result.

Experiences matter. People learn in many places, doing many things. Applications facilitate learning in vast and varied ways. The Experience API makes it possible for all of these activities and experiences to be collected and shared, and to be made more relevant for the learner. By making all types of activities trackable and sharable, relevance is built in wider markets and with dissimilar applications. This is what Experience API helps you do.

Importance for everyone.

The Experience API makes the learning experience you provide more important. The learner’s interactions with your tool are communicated through the API in a way other systems can make sense of and build on. The combination of learning experiences across many tools is a greater sum than its parts. These parts are not new, but are sometimes lost, now collecting and recognizing them is now possible.

Experiences matter with the Experience API

People have been learning everywhere, forever. The internet, software, and apps are a great new source of activities that lead to learning because information can be asked for and retrieved faster. These activities are trackable and quantifiable. When people do non-routine work, learning is inevitable. xAPI is the communication standard that supports collecting and tracking this. By adopting xAPI you are proving the value of your tool, your content, and providing a valuable service to your customers by sharing to help them show what they have done to other systems.

Read more

If you’re ready to implement xAPI, move on to the technical section to find out how.

Alternatively, you can read on and explore the emerging Enterprise Learning Ecosystem.

Questions? Ask us anything.

At Rustici Software, we help hundreds of people each month with their xAPI questions. Many aren’t sales prospects; they just have questions. We’re happy to help. You can ask us anything ‒ really.