Meet xAPI

Let’s start with a bit of vocabulary. xAPI is the short for Experience API, a way of communicating experiences. Tin Can API was a second and nicer name. Why Tin Can? Because of the tin can telephone that allows two people to communicate using the exact same interface. Since it has been acted that the official name will be xAPI, we should no longer use Tin Can API.

But what is used xAPI for? Like any other API, it is used to communicate information. However, the Experience API, or simply xAPI, is used to communicate information about experiences such as “Adam watched The introduction to IoT”. You might be able to feel it, xAPI is about keeping track about experiences which are not necessary related to formal learning.

Measure the impact of learning

Imagine you could collect, in the same format, information about the learning and the actual work. Currently, your organisation might already have some information about learning using a specific grammar and some information about work using another grammar. The idea is to bring all this data closer to each other and in the same format.

Record all types of learning experiences

Your organisation might already have a lot of information about e-learning courses living in the LMS such as duration, final score, course completion and maybe even the answers to the quiz questions. Now imagine you could also collect data about every single screen of e-learning but also exchange of messages in Slack or from mobile apps, even when learning takes place offline.

All those experiences are formatted in a form of statements: Adam achieved “The final test”. A statement is generated and sent to a Learning Record Store (LRS) which is basically a fancy name for a xAPI database.

Ease communication between different systems

In current learning ecosystems, each system stores data in their own format. It is like having different people communicating in their own language. Integrating different systems together is often a challenge. With xAPI, your organization can make different systems talk the same language.

Launch content without a LMS

Even if LMSs are not going to disappear suddenly like dinosaurs, it is worth noting that xAPI allows learning activities to be launched without using a LMS. For example, we could imagine an e-learning module launching from a custom made CMS.

To sum up

xAPI is a standard implemented by developers within an organisation or by vendors in their products. There are many possibilities but the technology is still at an early stage. xAPI will gather people from IT, pedagogy and law to discuss the possibilities of the Big Data for learning professionals.

How was your experience with xAPI? Feel free to leave a comment.