The single reason xAPI adoption has struggled

We need a native xAPI Authoring Tool to bring learning content into the next generation.

The Experience API (xAPI) promise was so grand – decouple content from your LMS, track learning wherever it happens and of course the holy grail: prove learning effectiveness. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say we’ve met these goals but not at scale. They require custom builds from experienced content providers. They come in the form of niche programs that deliver high results but require significant investment.

We love the Experience API. We’ve been preaching the benefits for over a decade and I feel the sting personally when a customer says they haven’t seen xAPI work at scale yet. They’re not wrong. But it’s not because xAPI can’t work at scale, it’s because we don’t have the tools to make it cost-effective.

It’s no secret that authoring tools can publish to xAPI – Storyline, Rise, Captivate and a slew of others are prominent throughout the industry. The problem is these aren’t “xAPI Tools”, they’re “SCORM Tools” that spit out xAPI-compatible versions of their SCORM counterparts. Herein lies the problem: they inherit all the limitations of SCORM but label it as “xAPI”. It’s like putting wings on a car and calling it a plane.

It may have wings, but it’s still just a car.

At ClearXP, we’ve tried our best to juice as much data as possible from authoring tools and we’re pretty proud of what we’ve accomplished. In the case of Storyline, we now have screen-by-screen tracking, detailed assessment results and custom interactions. We collect 3x as many data points as Storyline’s built-in xAPI tracking and over 5x more than their SCORM output.

However, the problem isn’t data collection. The biggest benefit of xAPI isn’t fine-grained analytics (although that’s certainly a huge benefit nevertheless). The biggest benefit is that you can create unbounded learning content. Learning content that can exist anywhere, take any shape or form AND that you can track it. We didn’t give xAPI flexible tracking for the sake of tracking, we embedded this power so we could create learning interactions that haven’t even been conceived yet.

There’s an old adage that humans only use 10% of their brain’s true potential. It would be generous to place the xAPI output from legacy authoring tools in that same category (it’s probably closer to 2%). It’s not that there isn’t demand either, customers are practically screaming out for better xAPI support and content providers aren’t delivering.

We need an xAPI authoring tool. No more workarounds, no more retrofitting existing tools to send xAPI statements. They’ve served their purpose, they’ve proven what xAPI data can tell us, but now’s the time to prove what xAPI can do for learning itself.

Learning designers have great ideas. I’ve sat in meetings where their imaginations have run wild and I’ve listened as those same ideas get shut down by content providers due to cost, technical limitations or the lack of tooling to execute effectively. We’ve removed the technical barriers, the only problem left is tooling. As vendors we have an obligation to fill this need. This is a call to action, and if nobody else stands up then we will.

At ClearXP our mission has always been to measure learning impact. We’ve done this by using xAPI to collect and prove learning effectiveness. Today our mission changes: we’re going to maximise learning impact and we’re going to put the power in your hands by creating the first xAPI-native authoring tool.

We want to provide the tooling for rapid experimentation and let you create spaced repetition campaigns, collaborative experiences, adaptive content, or AI-generated scenarios. These content types have existed for years but all within proprietary systems with massive vendor lock-in. But it doesn’t have to be that way – with the right tooling you can build this content, publish it to xAPI and run it from any xAPI-compliant learning platform.

We’ve had this technology for over a decade but we’ve kept it behind a locked door. We’re going to unlock that door, we’re going to let you create content never before seen in the learning industry. And we’re going to use xAPI to track its effectiveness.

Only then, can we start to maximise learning impact.