What is Tin Can API : shared language to capture people’s experience across systems

Tin Can API, Experience API, xAPI – three names for the same thing and is a brand new specification for learning technology that makes it possible to collect data about the wide range of experiences a person has (online and offline).

This API captures data in a consistent format about a person or group’s activities from many technologies. Very different systems are able to securely communicate by capturing and sharing this stream of activities using Tin Can’s simple vocabulary.

Learning plans, goals and targets are important. Setting goals for learning allows us to evaluate whether or not we are learning the things that we set out to learn.

It’s standard practice for e-learning courses and qualifications to have learning outcomes attached to them, and these are used to measure if our learning has been successful. They are also used by educators and trainers to evaluate whether or not their teaching and training have been effective, and are used to inform interventions, further learning requirements and amendments to learning materials and lesson plans.

Practical Applications of Tin Can

1. Learning Analytic (if you are not measuring the learning, you are not managing it)

Track learning and workplace experiences from multiple sources
Compare and correlate training and job performance
Use data to improve future learning interventions

2. Better Blended Learning
3. Adaptive Pathways (What happens in one learning experience affects which future experiences you are presented with)
4. Just-in-Time Performance Support
5. Mentoring
6. Team Learning
7. Multi-device Learning & open badges

A prospective on how Tin Can API can be integrated with Watson Cognitive computing:

This would allow Universities to improve student learning experience