When you train learners using outdated elearning standards such as SCORM with video based lessons, you miss a lot of information about the learner’s behaviour . It creates blind spots for keeping track of where learners are struggling, where they don’t want to pay attention, is not possible. And on top of that using such basic technologies allows the learner to just scrub through the video and complete it, and you will never know if the learner really watched the video to complete it or not.
This is where xAPI steps in and tools like GrassBlade xAPI Companion allow you to create xAPI content from any video and track learner behaviour to improve training content, correlate performance with the outcome and more.
The Shift: Binary Metrics to Behavioral Shape
Traditionally people use videos wrapped in SCORM, which just tells if a user completed watching a video and maybe how much time they spent. These are quantitative information, and to optimize ROI we don’t need how many watched, instead we need to know how they watched.
When a user engages with your videos, it’s not linear, it has peaks and valleys, and simple video completion data doesn’t tell anything about those peaks and valleys. Traditional tracking systems force organizations to make critical decisions based on guesses. To optimize Training ROI we have to shift from SCORM based simple completion tracking to xAPI based granular tracking to understand behavioral patterns.
The Shape of Attention
These are some of the behaviour you would want to look at instead of basic completion data-
- The Drop-Off Points(Boredom): If at some point of the video you see many users stop watching and it is before even concept is delivered properly, then your content has a pacing problem and you are losing attention early.
- The Rewind Clusters(Confusion):If you visualize where most of the users are rewinding, if you see such clusters, this will tell you where exactly your content is tool complex or poorly explained.
The Granularity of the xAPI Video Profile
xAPI enables this level of insight possible, which tracks learners’ entire journey throughout the video, not just completion. It allows capturing every play, pause, seek, and skip.
And to properly track and visualize these data you can use tools like GrassBlade xAPI Companion with GrassBlade LRS.
The Technical Proof: The xAPI Video Profile
A standardized xAPI video profile is used to map a heat map. Instead of simple information such as “completed”, xAPI video profile provides more information such as initialized, played, paused, seeked, and completed.
Real credit goes to xAPI json payload which not just records actions when learner interacts but it also provides the exact timestamp of the learners. Which allows accurate interpretation to heatmap.
Lets look at an example of video profile of xAPI:
{
"actor": {
"mbox": "mailto:johndoe@nextsoftwaresolutions.com",
"name": "John Doe",
"objectType": "Agent"
},
"verb": {
"id": "http://adlnet.gov/expapi/verbs/terminated",
"display": {
"en-US": "paused"
}
},
"object": {
"id": "https://www.nextsoftwaresolutions.com/learn?v=GTkVmAE2dqgIpr3qr",
"definition": {
"name": {
"en-US": "Example Video"
},
"type": "https://w3id.org/xapi/video/activity-type/video"
},
"objectType": "Activity"
},
"result": {
"extensions": {
"https://w3id.org/xapi/video/extensions/time": 54.321,
"https://w3id.org/xapi/video/extensions/progress": 1,
"https://w3id.org/xapi/video/extensions/played-segments": "0[.]54.321"
}
},
"context": {
"contextActivities": {
"category": [
{
"id": "https://w3id.org/xapi/video"
}
]
},
"extensions": {
"https://w3id.org/xapi/video/extensions/length": 54.321,
"https://w3id.org/xapi/video/extensions/session-id": "1d11991c-703e-4823-944b-gd9f6dab2c43",
"https://w3id.org/xapi/video/extensions/completion-threshold": "0.40"
},
"registration": "34ce2698-ef59-4974-b1f2-8c546f786e72"
},
"timestamp": "2025-12-27T13:17:47.846Z",
"id": "1e0a5d2f-fb45-4281-ba86-842d41440546",
"stored": "2025-12-27T13:17:47.859Z",
"authority": {
"account": {
"homePage": "https://gblrs.com/grassblade-lrs/xAPI/",
"name": "13-fdfk6n436e7g642"
},
"objectType": "Agent"
}
}
The GrassBlade Edge: Visualization and Security.
Even many modern LRS lacks what GrassBlade ecosystem provides. The combination of GrassBlade xAPI Companion and GrassBlade LRS allow you to track all the micro interactions with a video and help you to generate detailed video reports with heatmap, overview and more. It provides you HeatMap with different shades of the same color to represent the section of the video being replayed, more. The gap in the map shows where the user has skipped.
Capturing this level of granular video data introduces a severe security vulnerability, but the above combination allows you to use secure tokens instead of exposing root keys, it ensures that your data isn’t open for xAPI spoofing- where malicious users can write fake “completed” to the server. Secure token is generated temporarily that authorises video players to write data to LRS securely.
Audit Your Attention Span: The Next Step
If you can’t see and figure out where exactly learners are dropping off in your video lesson with your current L&D infrastructure, you are flying blind. You are investing in content creation but not measuring it’s consumption.
Stop guessing and start measuring how learners are interacting with your video. Check what elearning standard your current content is using, if it’s not xAPI then its time for you to upgrade your content and use xAPI. Does your LRS visualize heatmap? Does it use a secure token? If your answer is no, then you should go for the combination of GrassBlade xAPI Companion and GrassBlade LRS and up your game at tracking and analyzing video lessons with the help of Heatmaps.