This resource is what is delivered to the leaner when the item is selected. Items that do not have any children are required to reference a resource. When an item has children, it is referred to as an “aggregation” or “cluster”. Any item can have child items nested beneath it. The nodes within this tree are known as “activities” (when referencing them in the context of sequencing) or “items” (when referencing them in the context of content packaging). Organizations are always structured hierarchically, as a tree. A single manifest can contain more than one organization of the same content (for instance, to enable the content to be presented differently to different audiences), but typically there is just a single organization, the default organization.

Organizations are logical groupings of the parts of a course (resources) into a hierarchical structure. Resources should also contain a comprehensive list of all the files required for proper functionality of the resource so that they can be ported to new environments and still continue to function. Any resource that can be launched by the learner contains a pointer to the page to which the LMS should redirect the learner in order to launch the resource. The key difference between a SCO and an Asset is that a SCO can communicate with the LMS, whereas an Asset is simply static content that is presented to the user. SCOs are almost always instructional parts of a course.

SCOs are units of instruction that are also composed of one or more files.

Assets can either be stand alone units of instruction (“parts” of the course), or they can be logical collections of files that are reused in other parts of the course (a common set of branding images for instance).

An Asset is a collection of one or more files that makes up a logical unit.

There are two types of resources, SCOs and Assets. Resources are a list of “parts” that make up the course. It contains several essential pieces: Resources The manifest is an XML file that completely describes the content. The heart of the SCORM content packaging specification is the course’s manifest file.

Scorm package definition