What is cmi5 (cmi5 Specification)?
cmi5 is an xAPI profile, published by ADL and the former AICC community, that fixes how a learning management system imports a course package, launches each assignable unit, passes it credentials and an endpoint, and records the result as xAPI statements. It keeps SCORM-style launch from the LMS while sending tracking data as xAPI, not through a browser API.
How Personal Academy handles it
Personal Academy does not offer cmi5 today; tracked packages use SCORM 2004 import with resume, and inbound xAPI completion statements from external content are accepted and recorded.
A worked example
Suppose a 300-person airline training team receives a new course from a vendor in two formats, a cmi5 package and a SCORM 2004 package. Their learning platform does not handle cmi5 yet, so they load the SCORM 2004 version, which resumes where each learner stopped. They keep the cmi5 file on record so they can switch once their platform can launch it and pass a real test package.
xAPI solved the problem of tracking learning outside the browser, but it said nothing about how an LMS should launch content and hand it the information it needs. Early xAPI courses each invented their own launch method, so a course that worked in one system often did not work in another. cmi5 was written to close that gap; it is a specification to understand, not a feature this platform claims.
A cmi5 course package contains a course structure file that lists assignable units (AUs). When a learner starts an AU, the LMS builds a launch URL that carries the learner identity, a registration identifier, an activity identifier and the address of a fetch endpoint. The content calls that endpoint once to obtain an access token, then sends xAPI statements directly to the LMS record store, not through a JavaScript object in the browser.
cmi5 defines a small set of verbs that every AU must use in a fixed order: launched, initialized, then completed, passed or failed, and finally terminated. It also defines how the LMS decides whether the whole course is satisfied, and how mastery scores and move-on criteria are passed to the content. Implementations that skip the fetch endpoint, the State API or multi-AU courses do not pass conformance testing.
Adoption has been slower than for SCORM. Many authoring tools can export cmi5, but fewer learning platforms launch it end to end, and buyers often find that SCORM 2004 still covers resume and status for slide-based courses. Where a vendor lists cmi5, ask whether a real third-party package has passed through launch, statements and course satisfaction, because a partial player is not the same as support for the specification.