The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Employee Education System (EES) has launched a collaborative effort with their counterpart agencies in the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, and Navy to develop reusable training content that demonstrates effective instructional design, high production quality, and applicability to multiple agencies. This effort is in direct support of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative and is proving the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) concept.

This paper summarizes efforts of the first two pilot training programs developed under this initiative, noting insights applicable to the ADL community and others involved in interagency cooperative efforts. The first course, dealing with the prevention and management of workplace violence, provides learners experience through scenario-based exercises. The second is a training program for Pharmacy Technicians. It is extensive in scope, preparing technicians for certification exams, and providing didactic, laboratory, and clinical training. Both programs are, or will be, developed to the SCORM 2004 specification.

The diversity of these two programs reveals critical success factors for the design, development, and management of SCORM-conformant training. At a course management level, this includes increasing the effectiveness of interactive collaborative efforts. At the course creation level, this includes the design of learning objects for maximum reusability and sharability, the use of sequencing strategies to provide flexibility, and the impact of SCORM on project activities.