What is xAPI (Experience API (Tin Can API))?
The Experience API (xAPI), first known as the Tin Can API, is an ADL specification for recording learning experiences as JSON statements in an actor, verb and object form. Statements are sent over HTTPS to a Learning Record Store, so activity in apps, simulations, games or the workplace can be tracked, not only browser courses launched by an LMS.
How Personal Academy handles it
Personal Academy receives xAPI completion statements from external content and records them against the learner, but it does not yet forward statements to an external Learning Record Store.
A worked example
Suppose a 300-person manufacturer uses a tablet app on the shop floor to check that operators can set up a machine. Each time an operator passes the check, the app sends a statement such as: operator, passed, machine setup check, with a score. A learning platform that accepts inbound completion statements can mark the matching learning item done, so the training record reflects work that never happened in a browser.
ADL published xAPI in 2013 after a research project, code-named Tin Can, asked what a successor to SCORM should do. The answer was to separate tracking from the browser session. SCORM content can only report while it is open inside an LMS window; xAPI content can report from anywhere that can make an HTTPS request.
The core unit is the statement, a JSON document with an actor (who), a verb (what they did, identified by a URI), and an object (what they did it to). Optional parts add a result such as a score or success flag, a context such as the course or instructor, and a timestamp. Each statement carries a unique identifier, so a client can resend it safely after a network failure without creating a duplicate.
Statements are stored in a Learning Record Store (LRS) through a REST interface. The specification also defines smaller document stores for state, activity profiles and agent profiles, which content can use to remember bookmarks or preferences.
Because any system can define verbs and activities, xAPI data is only as useful as the agreement behind it. Communities publish profiles that fix the vocabulary for a domain, and the cmi5 specification is one such profile for content launched by an LMS; it is explained on its own page and is not something every platform offers.
In practice, organisations meet xAPI in two directions. Inbound, a learning platform accepts statements from outside content and turns them into progress or completions. Outbound, a platform sends its own learning events to an external LRS for analysis alongside other data. These are separate capabilities, so it is worth asking a vendor which direction it covers before planning a data pipeline.