And this is what comes back
Every activity in your course, with the reason for every loss and every skip — before you download anything.
- Week 1 — Reading the balance sheet Page · converts intact OK
- Depreciation walkthrough Video file, 214 MB · bundled into the package, so it plays with no internet at all OK
- Unit 2 assessment Quiz · asks 12 slots from a 40-question bank · scores reported to your LMS OK
- Cohort B handbook Restricted to one group in Moodle — will be visible to everyone LOSS
- Week 3 discussion Forum — needs a server holding state for a group of people SKIP
An illustration of the report’s shape, not a real course. Yours is built from your own backup.
- 01 Upload your backup Straight from your browser. We read it on your own machine first: a file that is not a course backup at all is caught before it uploads, and a backup with learner records in it is flagged, so you can decide before anything is sent. A large course takes a few minutes; keep the tab open while it converts.
- 02 Read the report Every activity, listed: what converts intact, what converts with something lost, and what cannot come across at all — with the reason for each.
- 03 Play the finished course In a stand-in LMS, free, before you download. Click through it, take the quiz, watch the score report. This is the whole thing, not a sample.
- 04 Download the package A SCORM 1.2 zip, validated against the specification, ready to upload to your LMS.
Which LMS does this work in?
Any that accepts SCORM 1.2 — which is essentially all of them. The format predates most of the platforms that read it, and support for it is table stakes. Among them:
- Cornerstone OnDemand
- Docebo
- TalentLMS
- Canvas
- D2L Brightspace
- Blackboard Learn
- SAP SuccessFactors
- SAP Litmos
- Workday Learning
- Absorb LMS
- LearnUpon
- Adobe Learning Manager
- Totara
- Schoology
- Moodle itself
If none of those words are familiar, you are in the right
place anyway. The file Moodle gives you when you back up a
course is an .mbz. The file your new platform wants is
a SCORM package — a zip it knows how to play, track and score.
Turning the first into the second is the whole job here.
Moving your whole platform off Moodle? Here is a plan that keeps both your courses and your records.
What converts, and what doesn’t
SCORM is a package for one learner with no server behind it. Moodle is a multi-user platform. Some of your course cannot survive that gap, and no converter can change it — so the honest thing is to tell you which parts, before you download rather than after.
| Moodle | In your package | |
|---|---|---|
| Page | Converts | A web page; becomes a page |
| Book | Converts | One page per chapter, in order |
| File | Converts | Bundled — including video and audio files |
| Folder | Converts | Becomes a list of its files |
| URL | Converts | Stays a link |
| Text and media area | Converts | Becomes a heading in the course menu (Moodle used to call this a Label) |
| Subsection | Converts | New in Moodle 5; becomes a named group inside its section |
| Quiz | Converts | Scored as Moodle scores it and reported to your LMS — which question types come across |
| Lesson | Not yet | Not built yet. Its pages and branching could work in a SCORM package; tell us if your courses use lessons |
| Glossary | Not yet | Nothing stops it becoming a static list of terms |
| IMS content package | Not yet | Already a content package; should pass straight through |
| H5P | Not yet | Runs in a browser, but reports to Moodle rather than to your LMS |
| Forum | Can’t | These need a server holding state for a group of people. A SCORM package has one learner and no server — there is nothing to convert them into |
| Wiki | Can’t | |
| Chat | Can’t | |
| Workshop | Can’t | |
| Assignment | Can’t | Needs somewhere to submit to and someone to grade it |
| Choice | Can’t | Collect responses to a server and aggregate them across participants |
| Feedback | Can’t | |
| Survey | Can’t | |
| Database | Can’t | |
| BigBlueButton | Can’t | A live session, not content |
| External tool (LTI) | Can’t | Launches a third-party service with credentials your LMS holds |
| Question bank | Can’t | Not a page a learner visits — its questions arrive through the quizzes that use them |
| SCORM package | Can’t | A SCORM package cannot meaningfully contain another one |
“Can’t” and “not yet” are different
answers. The first is a limit of the format and no converter
will ever get past it. The second is work we have not done — if
your course leans on one of those, tell us, because that is how it gets
prioritised.
Anything skipped is listed in your report with the reason, before you
pay. Nothing is dropped quietly.
Comes across intact
- Pages
- Books, chapter by chapter
- Files and folders — workbooks, PDFs, images
- Video and audio files stored in your course — bundled into the package, same as any other file
- Embedded video from Vimeo or YouTube — stays embedded, exactly as it was in Moodle
- Links
- Quizzes, with scoring reported to your LMS
Converts, with something lost
- Access restrictions. A page limited to one group in Moodle becomes visible to everyone — SCORM has no concept of groups, cohorts or dates.
- Completion rules more elaborate than finishing the pages or passing the quiz.
Both appear in your report, with the Moodle setting that caused them.
Cannot come across
- Forums, chats, wikis
- Assignments
- Workshops and peer assessment
- Choices and feedback surveys
- Essay questions
- Gradebook logic
- Anything with more than one person in it
These all need a server or a person on the other end. A SCORM package has neither. We list every one we skip, and why.
Lessons, glossaries, H5P and a few question types don’t convert yet. They can work in SCORM; we haven’t built them. Until then they’re skipped and listed in your report, and if your course uses them, let us know.
It will not look like your Moodle. Nothing can make it.
What you see when you open your course is your Moodle
theme — site-wide styling that lives in your Moodle
installation. A backup carries the course: its pages, files,
quizzes, structure. Not one stylesheet travels with it. We checked a
real backup rather than assuming: there is no CSS in it at all.
So a converted course arrives in a clean, standards-compliant player
instead. Your content, your structure, your wording, your images
— in different clothes. Worth knowing before you open it and
wonder what happened, and worth telling anyone who signs off on it.
A word on video, since it is the usual worry.
Both kinds come across. A video file sitting in your course is
packaged with everything else, so it plays with no internet at all. A
video embed — a Vimeo or YouTube player dropped into a
page — stays an embed and behaves exactly as it did in Moodle: the
learner streams it from the same place they always did.
The one thing to check: some hosts restrict which domains may embed a
video, and your LMS is a different domain from your Moodle. If you use
Vimeo’s “where can this be embedded” setting,
add the new domain. We list every embedded video we find so you know
which ones to check.
What a SCORM package can tell your LMS
Less than people expect, and that is the root of almost every surprise. A Moodle course is a website with a database behind it. A SCORM package is a folder of files that reports four things back to whatever LMS is playing it — and that conversation is the entire contract.
| It reports | Which means |
|---|---|
| Status |
One word for the whole course:
passed, failed,
completed, incomplete or
not attempted. Not one per activity —
one for the package.
|
| Score | A number from 0 to 100 — so yes, a percentage grade, and your LMS records it like any other. We send it only when the course has an assessment that counts. A course with no quiz sends no score rather than a misleading zero. |
| Bookmark | Where the learner stopped, so they resume in the right place. |
| Progress | Which pages they have seen and how each quiz went, kept in a scratchpad the LMS stores but never reads. It is how the tick marks survive closing the tab. |
That is the whole list. There is no per-activity progress in the LMS gradebook, no per-question answers, no forum posts, no roster. Not because the converter is holding back — because SCORM has nowhere to put them. Anything in Moodle that needs a server, a teacher or another learner has no destination on the other side.
How quizzes come across
The part most worth getting right, and the part most people are most nervous about.
Images inside questions
They come across. This sounds obvious and is not: in a Moodle backup a question’s images live somewhere no activity’s file list points at, so a converter that only follows the obvious path ships every screenshot as a broken image. We go and get them.
Feedback you wrote
If you wrote feedback in Moodle — on the question, or on individual answers — it comes across and shows after answering, the same way it does now. If you did not write any, there is none to carry; your report tells you which quizzes have it and which do not.
Marked the way Moodle marks it
Your pass mark comes from your quiz settings, not from us. Partial credit works as it does in Moodle: a “nearly right” answer worth 50% earns half, and on a question with several right answers a wrong tick costs marks.
One score, not a gradebook
Moodle grades every quiz separately and weighs them into a course total. SCORM has room for one score. So one assessment carries the credit and the rest stay review questions — worth doing, not part of the mark. Your report names which one, before you pay.
Which question types come across
Moodle has a lot of question types. Here is every one in standard Moodle 5. A question of a type we do not carry is left out of its quiz — and your report names it, quiz by quiz, with how many questions Moodle asks beside how many the package asks.
| Question type | In your package | |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple choice | Converts | One or several answers, with Moodle’s partial credit |
| True/False | Converts | |
| Matching | Converts | Scored per pair, as in Moodle |
| Drag-and-drop matching | Converts | A plugin; shown as dropdowns, scored per pair |
| Select missing words | Converts | Scored per gap, as in Moodle |
| Drag and drop into text | Converts | Shown as dropdowns, which work on touch screens and inside an LMS |
| Short answer | Converts | Matched as Moodle matches it, case rule and * wildcards included. An exact answer — a keycode — is stored scrambled, so it is not in the page source to be read |
| Numerical | Converts | Marked within your tolerance; units accepted as Moodle accepts them |
| Embedded answers (Cloze) | Not yet | Gaps of several kinds inside one passage |
| Calculated | Not yet | Numbers generated for each learner from a formula |
| Simple calculated | Not yet | |
| Calculated multichoice | Not yet | |
| Random short-answer matching | Not yet | Built from your course’s short-answer questions |
| Ordering | Not yet | Put items in the right order |
| Drag and drop onto image | Not yet | |
| Drag and drop markers | Not yet | |
| Description | Not yet | Text between questions rather than a question; not counted |
| Essay | Can’t | Needs a person to read and mark it, and a package has nobody to send it to |
Awarding CPE, CLE or CME credit?
Then the number that matters is how many questions a learner is asked — not how many sit in the question bank behind the quiz. A twelve-slot quiz drawing at random from a forty-question bank asks twelve.
We carry the whole bank so retakes differ, and present exactly the slot count Moodle defines. Your report shows, quiz by quiz, how many questions Moodle asks beside how many the package asks — so if a question type we cannot carry makes them differ, you see it before you download.
One assessment sets the score your LMS records: the one your Moodle completion settings name, or the one you pick when you customise. Review questions stay review questions.
Course completion, honoured as far as it goes
Moodle lets you set eight conditions for when a course counts as complete. We read them out of your backup and honour the ones a package can answer. The rest are not skipped out of laziness — they are unanswerable, and we would rather say so than quietly decide for you.
| Condition | In your package | |
|---|---|---|
| Activity completion | Honoured | The activities you marked as required, on the terms you set — viewed, attempted, or passed |
| Course grade | Honoured | The overall mark you require, checked against the score the package reports |
| Manual self completion | Not yet | We read it, and the player has no “mark me complete” control yet — so the condition cannot be met |
| Completion of other courses | Can’t | A package is one course, playing for one learner, with no enrolment behind it and no teacher watching. These conditions ask about things that exist only on a Moodle server — there is nothing on the other side to ask |
| A set date | Can’t | |
| Enrolment duration | Can’t | |
| Unenrolment | Can’t | |
| Marked complete by a teacher | Can’t |
If you set no conditions at all — and most courses do not — the package falls back sensibly: pass the assessment that carries the credit, or where there is none, cover the activities you tracked, or where you tracked none, see every page. Your report says which of those applies to your course, in words.
Two free tools, no account
Check a Moodle backup before you convert it, or play any SCORM package, from any authoring tool, the way an LMS would.
MBZ Check
Drop in a Moodle backup (.mbz) and see what’s inside: every activity, what converts and what can’t, and whether it holds learner data.
Your file never leaves your computer.
Check a backup → Live nowSCORM Preview
Play a package in a stand-in LMS and click through it the way a learner will: navigation, quizzes, scores and completion. For the technical check, one click shows what the LMS is told.
Runs in your browser. Nothing uploads.
Open a package →Pricing
- Converting and previewing is free. Every course, every time. You pay only to download the package.
- $29 per course, converted as it is.
- $49 customised — your own course title and colour, activities left out, and which quiz counts toward completion.
- $19 per course for a batch of 2 to 10 courses, with one colour for all of them.
- No credits, no subscription. No seats, no per-learner fee, nothing to cancel.
- You only pay for a package you have already seen running.
About your course files
A Moodle backup taken with user data included carries real learner information — enrolments, grades, issued certificates. None of it ever reaches the SCORM package. But the best way to protect it is for it never to leave your Moodle at all, so our export guide has you switch it off, and we say so loudly if we find it anyway.
- Your uploaded backup is deleted after 7 days.
- Your built package is available for 7 days.
- Rather we held nothing? Delete both yourself, from the download page, the moment you have your copy.
- We keep a record of the conversion — file name, settings, report, and whether it was paid — so we can answer questions about it later. Not the course itself.
- We do not train anything on your course content.