What is xAPI?
xAPI, the Experience API (once ‘Tin Can’), is a standard for recording learning experiences as simple statements — actor, verb, object — sent to a Learning Record Store. Its point is that learning happens outside courses, and the data model should be able to say so.
xAPI widened the pipe. It didn’t decide what flows through it.
SCORM could only describe what happened inside a course session. xAPI removes that boundary: any system can emit statements about anything — a simulation attempt, a job-aid lookup, a coaching conversation, a retrieval practice answer at 9pm on a phone. Statements land in an LRS where they can be queried and combined. It’s a genuine advance in expressiveness.
What xAPI doesn’t do is tell you which statements are worth recording or what they mean. Plenty of xAPI deployments produce enormous statement volumes and no more insight than a completion report — because the hard question was never the transport format. It’s which measurements actually indicate learning, and that’s a pedagogy decision the standard deliberately leaves open.
What xAPI makes possible
Concept-level granularity, offline capture with later sync, cross-system learning records, and measurement of things that were never courses — all genuinely useful.
Where deployments go wrong
Recording everything because you can. Statement volume isn’t insight, and an LRS full of undifferentiated events is harder to reason about than a good completion report.
The statements worth recording
Retrieval attempts with delay and difficulty context — because those are the events that let you compute retention. Design the measurement, then use xAPI to carry it.
Statements with a purpose
Actor–verb–object is plumbing; the value is what listens — here, every statement updates a memory model.
Interface shown as an illustration with representative numbers, not a screenshot — the layout is the product’s.
Decide the measurement first.
We’ll show which events actually compute retention — the design conversation that makes any LRS worth having.
The evidence this page stands on
Questions buyers ask
Do we need an LRS?
Only if you have a real cross-system analysis need. Many organisations buy one, fill it, and never query it — the value is in the questions, not the store.
Does this platform support xAPI?
Learning data exports through documented APIs, and xAPI statement export is supported where customers have an LRS strategy. The integrations page covers current specifics.
xAPI vs cmi5 — what’s the difference?
cmi5 is a profile layered on xAPI that reintroduces course semantics — launch, completion, pass/fail — for structured content. Think of it as xAPI with the LMS conventions restored.
Will xAPI replace SCORM entirely?
For data, largely yes over time. For packaging portability, SCORM persists because nothing else solved that problem as durably.
What’s the honest first step with xAPI?
Write down the three questions you want answered about learning. If xAPI statements are needed to answer them, deploy it; if not, you’d be buying plumbing for a house you haven’t designed.
See it on your own content.
Bring one course. We’ll show you the retention curve your current training leaves behind — and what scheduled review does to it.
- 30 minutes, on your calendar — pick a slot here
- Run on your own content wherever possible, not a canned deck
- You see the dashboards, the learner surface and the evidence exports
- No commitment — and pilot data stays yours either way