Reference
What converts from Moodle to SCORM, and what doesn’t
Everything a learner uses on their own converts: pages, books, files and folders, video and audio, links, and quizzes, scored and reported to your LMS.
Anything that needs a server, a teacher or other learners cannot: forums, chats, wikis, assignments, workshops, choices, feedback, surveys and databases. That is true of any converter. SCORM is a package for one learner with no server behind it, so there is nothing to convert those activities into.
Lessons, glossaries, H5P and IMS content packages don’t convert yet. They can work in SCORM; we haven’t built them. If your course uses one of them, let us know.
Every Moodle activity and resource
Each activity has one of three answers: it converts; it can’t convert, with any tool; or it could convert and we haven’t built it yet (“Not yet”).
| Moodle | In your package | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Page | Converts | A web page; becomes a page |
| Book | Converts | One page per chapter, in order |
| File | Converts | Bundled into the package, 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 | Needs a server to store each post and show it to everyone else in the course. A SCORM package has one learner and no server |
| Chat | Can’t | Needs a server passing messages between people as they type |
| Wiki | Can’t | Needs a server holding pages that a group of people write and edit together |
| Workshop | Can’t | Needs other learners to assess each other’s work |
| Assignment | Can’t | Needs somewhere to submit to and someone to grade it |
| Choice | Can’t | Collects answers on a server and adds them up across participants |
| Feedback | Can’t | Collects responses on a server and adds them up across participants |
| Survey | Can’t | Collects responses on a server and adds them up across participants |
| Questionnaire | Can’t | A plugin that collects responses on a server; SCORM has no equivalent |
| Database | Can’t | A shared set of records that participants add to and search; needs a server |
| Certificate | Can’t | Issued to each learner by Moodle; your LMS issues its own completion certificates |
| 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.
What converts, with something lost
Some things come across but cannot behave exactly as they did in Moodle. Each one appears in your conversion report, with the Moodle setting that caused it.
Access restrictions
A page limited to one group in Moodle becomes visible to everyone. SCORM has no concept of groups, cohorts or dates, so a restriction has nothing to attach to.
Completion rules
Rules more elaborate than finishing the pages or passing the quiz. A SCORM package reports one status for the whole course, not one per activity.
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.
The look of your Moodle
What you see in Moodle is your Moodle theme, site-wide styling that lives in your Moodle installation. A backup carries the course, not one stylesheet. So a converted course arrives in a clean, standards-compliant player: your content, structure, wording and images, in different clothes.
Video
Both kinds come across. A video file stored in your course is packaged with everything else. A Vimeo or YouTube embed stays an embed, streamed from the same place as before. If your video host restricts which websites may embed a video, add your LMS’s domain; your report lists every embedded video so you know which to check.
Every quiz question type
Every question type 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 | How |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple choice | Converts | One or several answers, with Moodle’s partial credit |
| True/False | Converts | Scored as in Moodle |
| 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 | Numbers generated for each learner from a formula |
| Calculated multichoice | Not yet | Numbers generated for each learner from a formula |
| 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 | Left out of the quiz for now, and named on your report |
| Drag and drop markers | Not yet | Left out of the quiz for now, and named on your report |
| 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 |
How a converted quiz is marked
- 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.
- Images inside questions come across, and so does any feedback you wrote, on the question or on individual answers.
What your LMS receives
A SCORM 1.2 package reports four things back to the LMS playing it: one status for the whole course, a score from 0 to 100 (only when the course has an assessment that counts), a bookmark so the learner resumes where they stopped, and their progress through the pages. There is no per-activity progress in the LMS gradebook, no per-question answers and no forum posts, because SCORM has nowhere to put them. What SCORM is, and how it talks to an LMS →
Which of these is in your course?
MBZ Check reads your Moodle backup in your browser, in seconds and without uploading anything, and shows which of your activities fall on each side of this page. When you convert, anything skipped is listed in your report with the reason, before you pay. Nothing is dropped quietly.