A specification for recording a learning activity as a statement of who did what to which object. The work is associated with Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL), so training systems can exchange those statements instead of keeping every record inside one course file.
The exchange uses an Application Programming Interface (API). One system reports the activity, and another can store the statement or read it later. The record is the statement itself, not a course file that has to be launched before it can report a score.
What a Statement Records
The statement answers three questions: who acted, what they did, and which object that action concerns. Extra detail, such as a score or the place where the activity happened, can travel with the statement, but the record still stands on those three parts.
| Part | What It Identifies |
| Actor | Who performed the activity: a person, a group, or a system. |
| Verb | The action that was taken, written so another system can recognize it. |
| Object | The activity or resource the action concerns. |
How a Statement Moves
A learning activity does not have to happen inside a packaged course for a statement to exist.
- At the activity. The place where the learner’s action happens can describe that action as a statement.
- Into a store. Another system can keep the statement so the record outlives the moment of the activity.
- For later reading. A report can read the stored statements without launching the original course again.
How It Differs from a Course Package
Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) packages a course as a shareable content object. A Learning Management System (LMS) launches that object, and the package reports progress back to the system that launched it. xAPI is more flexible than that packaging, because the activity does not have to live inside the object.
The statement can describe practice, reading, or an answer, rather than only a score sent when a launch ends. The same learner can produce separate statements from separate activities, and those statements can be kept even when no single course package owns them.
