How to Test a SCORM Package Before You Upload It
Before you send training to your employees, it's worth confirming the SCORM package actually works — completion tracking fires, the course launches, and progress saves correctly. A few minutes of testing now prevents a lot of frustration later.
Why testing matters
A SCORM package that looks fine in your authoring tool can still have problems when delivered through a platform. The most common issue: the course plays correctly but the completion status never gets sent back to the platform — meaning employees appear "in progress" forever no matter what they do.
Testing catches these issues before your employees encounter them.
Option 1: Preview inside Ethica
If you're using Ethica, the fastest way to test is to upload your SCORM package and use the built-in preview. Preview runs the course in the same player your employees use.
After uploading, open the requirement and click Preview Requirement. Preview doesn't save progress or completion. It logs each value the course saves, and when it commits and finishes, in your browser's developer console, so you can check that a completion status is sent. To confirm completion end to end, add yourself as an employee, assign the requirement to yourself and finish it from the emailed link. Deactivate yourself afterwards to free the seat.
Option 2: SCORM Cloud
SCORM Cloud by Rustici Software is the industry-standard tool for testing SCORM packages. Its free trial has no time limit and allows up to 3 courses and 10 active registrations, and it gives you detailed debugging output — including every SCORM data call your course makes.
To use it:
- Create a free account at cloud.scorm.com
- Upload your SCORM ZIP
- Launch the course and complete it
- Check the Registration record to see what completion status was reported
SCORM Cloud is especially useful if you're diagnosing a problem and need to see the raw data model values your course is sending.
What to check during testing
Completion fires correctly
Go through the course as a learner would — either reach the last slide or pass the quiz, depending on how your completion is configured. After finishing, check that the completion status is completed or passed (not incomplete or failed).
Suspend/resume works
Start the course, get partway through, close it, then relaunch it. The course should resume from where you left off. If it restarts from the beginning every time, your suspend data isn't saving — which means employees lose progress if they're interrupted.
The course launches without errors
Open your browser's developer console (F12 on Windows, Cmd+Option+J in Chrome on Mac) while running the course. A healthy SCORM course shouldn't throw JavaScript errors or connection failures. Errors in the console often indicate a broken file reference inside the package.
Common problems and fixes
| Problem | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Course won't launch | Missing or malformed imsmanifest.xml |
Re-export from your authoring tool. Put imsmanifest.xml at the root of the ZIP; Ethica also finds it inside a single folder, but many other platforms don't |
| Status stays "incomplete" after finishing | Completion trigger isn't configured correctly | Re-check your authoring tool's completion settings (slide %, quiz pass, or explicit completion call) |
| Course restarts from the beginning each time | Suspend data not saving | Ensure your platform supports resume; check if your SCORM package is writing cmi.suspend_data |
| Media won't load (images/audio/video missing) | File paths are absolute instead of relative inside the package | Re-export; check that all assets are included in the ZIP and referenced with relative paths |
Once testing passes
Your package is ready. Upload it to Ethica and assign it to your team: each employee opens it from an email link with no login, and Ethica records the completion and sends the reminders. Watch how to upload your own course.