The latest SCORM version, in one paragraph
The latest SCORM version is SCORM 2004 4th Edition, published by ADL in 2009. Nothing has been released since: there is no SCORM 2.0, 2.1 or 3.0. ADL's later work went into xAPI (2013) and cmi5 (2016), which are separate specifications, not new SCORM versions. SCORM 1.2, from 2001, is older but still the most widely supported export.
That last sentence is why the question matters less than it sounds. "Latest" and "best choice" are different questions, and the rest of this article separates them.
Every SCORM version, in order
SCORM has had six releases that a package can declare. The dates are the ADL publication dates; the schemaversion column is the string you will find in the <metadata> block of imsmanifest.xml, which is how an LMS decides which rules to apply.
| Version | Year | schemaversion | What it changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| SCORM 1.0 | 2000 | — | First release. Established the idea of a SCO, the JavaScript API and the CMI data model inherited from AICC. Not used in production today. |
| SCORM 1.1 | 2001 | 1.1 | Cleaned up 1.0. Short-lived and rarely seen. |
| SCORM 1.2 | 2001 | 1.2 | Adopted IMS Content Packaging, which is where imsmanifest.xml comes from. The version most LMSs were built around and still the most common export. |
| SCORM 2004 2nd Edition | 2004 | CAM 1.3 or 2004 2nd Edition | New API object (API_1484_11), separate completion and success status, scaled scores, and sequencing and navigation. An initial 2004 release, briefly called SCORM 1.3, was superseded by 2nd Edition within months. |
| SCORM 2004 3rd Edition | 2006 | 2004 3rd Edition | Clarified sequencing and the run-time data model so LMSs would implement them consistently. Widely used. |
| SCORM 2004 4th Edition | 2009 | 2004 4th Edition | Further sequencing fixes, cmi.suspend_data raised to 64,000 characters, shared data stores (adl.data) and jump navigation. The final release. |
Notice the shape of the list. There are really two SCORMs: 1.2, and 2004 in three editions. The 2004 editions share one API and one data model and differ in wording and a few additions; the gap between 1.2 and any 2004 edition is far larger than the gap between editions. SCORM 2004 2nd vs 3rd vs 4th Edition goes through the edition differences and how to read which one a package declares.
cmi.suspend_data at 4,096 characters; SCORM 2004 2nd and 3rd Edition cap it at 4,000; only 4th Edition raises it to 64,000. "SCORM 2004" on its own does not tell you which limit applies — the edition does.Is there a SCORM 2.0 or 2.1?
No. Neither was ever published, and a package that claims either is mislabelled.
The confusion has a real source. In 2008 an industry group called LETSI ran a "SCORM 2.0" effort: a call for white papers and workshops on what a successor should look like. It produced requirements and discussion, not a specification, and no LMS or authoring tool ever implemented a "SCORM 2.0" package because there was nothing to implement. ADL instead funded the work that became the Experience API, released as xAPI 1.0 in 2013, and later adopted cmi5, released in 2016, as the profile that lets xAPI content be packaged and launched by an LMS the way SCORM content is.
So if you see "SCORM 2.0" today it is one of three things: a reference to that 2008 initiative, a vendor's informal name for xAPI or cmi5, or a typo for SCORM 2004. "SCORM 2.1" has no origin at all beyond people guessing that a 2.0 must have been followed by one. There is also no "SCORM 2004 5th Edition" and no "SCORM 2010" or similar; 4th Edition closed the series.
It is worth being precise about what the successors are and are not. xAPI defines statements sent over HTTP to a learning record store; it has no package format, no manifest and no launch method of its own. cmi5 is a package — a zip with a cmi5.xml course structure — that carries xAPI content and defines how an LMS launches it. Neither reads imsmanifest.xml, neither looks for a SCORM API object, and neither will import into a SCORM-only LMS. They are alternatives to SCORM, not versions of it.
Is SCORM dead?
SCORM is maintained but no longer developed. That is a specific status, and it is not the same as deprecated.
The specification documents, the conformance test suite and the schemas are still published by ADL, and the behaviour they define has not changed since 2009. No new features will be added. At the same time, every mainstream LMS still imports SCORM 1.2 and most import SCORM 2004, because the installed base of SCORM content is enormous and because the runtime is simple enough to keep working indefinitely: a browser, an iframe, a JavaScript object and eight functions. Nothing about modern browsers has broken that model, and nothing on the horizon threatens to.
What has changed is the content inside the package. Older SCORM courses were Flash, and Flash stopped running in every browser at the end of 2020. Those packages are dead in the practical sense — they load and show nothing — but that is the content technology failing, not SCORM. A SCORM 1.2 package built with HTML5 content today runs exactly as the specification describes, and will continue to.
The realistic picture for the next several years is coexistence. SCORM for packaged courses delivered through an LMS with completion, score and time reporting; xAPI and cmi5 where the content lives outside an LMS, needs richer data, or must report to a central record store. Vendors who describe SCORM as obsolete are usually selling one of the alternatives, and the alternatives are good — but "obsolete" is not what the LMS import screens say.
Which version should you actually use?
Not automatically the latest. Pick by two things: what the destination LMS supports well, and whether you need anything that only SCORM 2004 provides.
The features that genuinely require SCORM 2004 are:
- Completion and success reported separately. SCORM 1.2 has one field,
cmi.core.lesson_status, so a learner is either completed or passed or failed. SCORM 2004 hascmi.completion_statusandcmi.success_status, so "finished the course and failed the test" is expressible. - More than 4 KB of saved state. If a single SCO stores long bookmarks, many answers or branching history, you need 4th Edition's 64,000-character
cmi.suspend_data. Anything else truncates on resume. - LMS-enforced sequencing. Prerequisites, forced order and rollup rules defined in the manifest rather than inside the content. Only 2004 has this, and only some LMSs implement it faithfully.
- Interactions you intend to read back. SCORM 1.2 interactions are write-only; 2004 interactions are read/write with typed responses.
If none of those apply, SCORM 1.2 is the default for a reason: it imports everywhere, including on older and locked-down platforms, and the things that go wrong with it are well understood. If one or more apply, export SCORM 2004 4th Edition where the platform accepts it and 3rd Edition where it does not — most platforms that support 2004 at all accept both, but confirm rather than assume, and test a package that uses the specific feature you depend on rather than a one-page sample. The full decision walk-through is in Which SCORM version should I use?, and the field-by-field comparison is in SCORM 1.2 vs SCORM 2004.
The one thing not to do is choose 2004 because it is newer. A SCORM 2004 package that uses none of the 2004 features gains nothing over a 1.2 package and loses compatibility with the platforms that never implemented 2004 well. Newest is a fact about the specification's history; right is a fact about your LMS and your content.
Where SCORM Central fits
SCORM Central turns PowerPoint, PDF, and video files into SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004 4th Edition packages you can edit in its course builder, and its free tester shows the manifest checks and every runtime call a package makes before an LMS sees it. See how it works, or test a package free.