Glossary

Activity provider (AP)

Also referred to as a Learning Record Provider. This change differentiates that the activity itself is not always the responsibility of software, rather just the tracking portion is.

Application programming interface (API)

A set of rules and standards created to allow access into a software application or tool. The Application programming interface is a system of tools and resources in an operating system, enabling developers to create software applications. See Also: APIs Defined

Authentication

The concept of verifying identity. Authentication allows interactions between two "trusted" parties.

Bearer token Bearer authentication (also called token authentication) is an HTTP authentication scheme that involves security tokens called bearer tokens.

Connectors

Connectors tie APIs on one system to APIs on another system.

Skillsoft is in the process of building connectors to enable turn-key integrations with a wide range of industry-leading platform and content vendors. This enables organizations to select the exact services and technologies they need to meet their business objectives and technical capabilities.

Wherever possible, Percipio will use a vendor’s public API and will manage the ongoing maintenance of the experience and the connectors.

Content aggregation

“Content aggregation” is the act of collecting content (blogs, newsletters, news articles, social media posts, etc.) from various feeds to the same place online. Aggregation can be done manually by people or automatically by software tools.

The content aggregation process is part of an organization’s content marketing strategy. Aggregating content helps them write their own blog posts and deliver value to users. At the same time, some companies use it for news intelligence to always be knowledgeable of their industry.

Ecosystem

The ecosystem metaphor is used in order to denote an analysis which takes into account multiple software systems.

It's a set of businesses functioning as a unit and interacting with a shared market for software and services, together with relationships among them. These relationships are frequently underpinned by a common technological platform and operate through the exchange of information, resources, and artifacts.

Endpoint

An entry point in a service-oriented-architecture. xAPI mirrors this approach with resources by defining the IRI from which communication takes place as an endpoint.

ELSA (Percipio)

Generate search from within browser or wherever you are, to pull up modal with content related to that word/words selected and searched on.

Experience API (xAPI)

The collection of rules that determines how learning experiences are defined, formatted, and exchanged so that independent software programs can exchange and make use of this information.

xAPI is a specification that makes it possible to collect and share data across various system. As people interact and learn, the API captures these actions so that different systems can securely communicate the stream of activities through xAPI's simple vocabulary.

GitHub

GitHub Inc. is a web-based hosting service for version control using Git. It is mostly used for computer code. It offers all of the distributed version control and source code management functionality of Git as well as adding its own features

LRS

A Learning Record Store (LRS), is a system that receives, stores and returns data about learning experiences, achievements, and job performance. LRSs can be standalone or used together; they were designed to communicate with one another and are often integrated with an LMS to collect data and use it for dashboards, reports and other analytics.

An LRS is the heart of any xAPI ecosystem; it records all of the statements made, receiving and processing requests. To do anything with xAPI, you'll need and LRS because every tool that sends or retrieves learning activity data, interacts with the LRS - it's the central store.

The primary functions of an LRS are:

Statement collection
Statement management
Statement distribution
- View
- Exchange
- Report
Collect statements anywhere, anytime. LRS is the heart of the xAPI ecosystem.

LMS

Learning Management System is an application/platform for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of training courses. When properly set up and used, the system controls every part of learning course.

Learning Experience

An event associated with learning. It is highly diverse as far as what it can be. Examples include reading a book, taking an online course, going on a field trip, engaging in self-directed research, or receiving a certificate for a completed course.

Learning Management System (LMS)

"A software package used to administer one or more courses to one or more learners. An LMS is typically a web-based system that allows learners to authenticate themselves, register for courses, complete courses and take assessments" (Learning Systems Architecture Lab definition). An LMS in this document is used as an example of how a user is identified as "trusted" within a system and able to access its Learning Experiences.

Learning Record

An account of a learning experience that is formatted according to the rules of xAPI. A Learning Record takes on many forms, including Statements, documents, and their parts. This definition is intended to be all-inclusive.

Learning Record Consumer (LRC)

An xAPI Client that accesses data from Learning Record Store(s) with the intent of processing the data, including interpretation, analysis, translation, dissemination, and aggregation.

Learning Record Provider (LRP) An xAPI Client that sends data to Learning Record Store(s). Often, the Learning Record Provider will create Learning Records while monitoring a learner as a part of a Learning Experience.

Learning Record Store (LRS)

A server (i.e. system capable of receiving and processing web requests) that is responsible for receiving, storing, and providing access to Learning Records.

Metadata

Metadata is additional information about the resource that enables decision making, search, and discoverability. In xAPI, metadata can be utilized in a variety of locations. It is descriptive, structural, or administrative. Descriptive is used for discovery and identification for information to search an object, such as the title, author, subject, etc. Metadata helps in summarization between current detailed data and highly summarized data - in laymans' terms, it allows search engines to understand what each page portrays.

Metadata Consumer

A person, organization, software program or other thing that seeks to determine the meaning represented by an IRI used within this specification and/or retrieves metadata about an IRI. An LRS might or might not be a metadata consumer.

Metadata Provider

A person, organization, software program or other thing that coins IRIs to be used within this specification and/or hosts metadata about an IRI.

Persona

A set of one or more representations which defines an Actor uniquely. Conceptually, this is like having a "home email" and a "work email". Both are the same person, but have different data, associations, etc.

Profile

A specific set of rules and documentation for implementing xAPI in a particular context. Profiles generally provide a particular vocabulary of terms, some created specifically for the profile, and some are referenced from other vocabularies. Sometimes a profile might provide multiple vocabularies for different situations, and sometimes someone might curate a vocabulary from multiple sources without creating a profile. Not to be confused with Document Profile Resource.

Postman

App for developing APIs

REST APIs

The Percipio REST APIs provide a comprehensive set of APIs that allow customers to automate a number of key operations in Percipio. They are HTTP-based RESTful APIs that use bearer tokens for authorization. API request and response bodies are formatted in JSON. All Percipio APIs are documented using OpenAPI

Service

A software component responsible for one or more aspects of the distributed learning process. An LMS typically combines many services to design a complete learning experience.

Statement

A data structure showing evidence for any sort of experience or event which is to be tracked in xAPI as a Learning Record. A set of several Statements, each representing an event in time, might be used to track complete details about a learning experience

Schema

A schema is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information. Schemas can be useful because they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting the vast amount of information that is available in our environment

SCORM

Shareable Content Object Reference Model, is a set of technical standards for eLearning software/LMS.

SCORM tells programmers how to write their code so that it can “play well” with other eLearning software. It is the de facto industry standard for eLearning interoperability. Specifically, SCORM governs how online learning content and Learning Management Systems (LMSs) communicate with each other. SCORM does not speak to instructional design or any other pedagogical concern — it is purely a technical standard.

Sharelinks

Share Links are building blocks that allow you to distribute files in emails, social media, web sites, etc. When enabled, the links are set to public and can be shared.

Scaleable

Scalability is the capability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work, or its potential to be enlarged to accommodate that growth. For example, a system is considered scalable if it is capable of increasing its total output under an increased load when resources are added.

Service accounts

A service account is a dedicated entity in Percipio used for authenticating API calls. A service account is similar in concept to a user account in two ways:

It lives within an organization.
It has a secret security credential attached to it.

SAML

Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is an XML-based framework for authentication and authorization between two entities: a Service Provider (SP) and an Identity Provider (IP). SAML is a method of access control that enables a user to log in once and gain access to the resources of multiple software systems without being prompted to log in again.

It's an open standard that allows security credentials to be shared by multiple computers across a network. It describes a framework that allows one computer to perform some security functions on behalf of one or more other computers:

Authentication: determining that the users are who they claim to be
Authorization: determining if users have the right to access certain systems or content

SSO allows an end user to sign into their Percipio instance without having to remember specific Percipio credentials.

Structured Data

Combines both data types and collections to get a collection with a branch and a data value. API responses almost always have structured data.

Swagger

Swagger is an open source software framework backed by a large ecosystem of tools that helps developers design, build, document, and consume RESTful Web services.

UUID

Universally Unique Identifiers, or UUIDs, are 128-bit values that are globally unique. Unlike IRIs, there is no expectation of resolvability as UUIDs take on a completely different format. UUIDs MUST be in the standard string form.

Verb

Is the action being done by the Actor within the Activity within a Statement. A Verb represents the "did" in "I did this".

xApi (see also Experience API)