The source is the course
Every e-learning team has a version of this story. A course needs one small change. A date is wrong, a policy has moved, a screenshot shows last year's software. The change should take ten minutes. Then somebody asks where the source file is, and nobody knows.
Two files for every course
Traditional authoring tools split a course into two things. There is the source, the project file you edit. In Articulate Storyline that is a .story file. In Adobe Captivate it is a .cptx file. Then there is the course, the SCORM .zip you publish and upload to your LMS.
Only one of those can be edited. The published course is output, a one-way export. Storyline cannot open a Storyline SCORM package, and Captivate cannot open a Captivate one. To change the course you need the project file, the right version of the tool, and a license for it.
The course is the file everyone can see. It sits in the LMS, it gets assigned, and it gets completed. The source is the file everyone forgets. It lives on one designer's laptop, in a contractor's archive, or in a shared drive nobody has opened since the project closed. When the laptop is replaced, or the contractor moves on, the source goes with them.
What is left is a course that works and cannot be changed. Every team then has the same three choices. Rebuild it from scratch. Try to reverse-engineer the published output. Or leave it wrong.
One file
IRLO Studio has no separate source file. Nothing is kept on the side, so nothing can be lost. The course you publish is the source.
When you export from IRLO Studio, you get a standard SCORM .zip. It uploads to your LMS like any other package. Later, when the course needs that ten-minute change, you import that same .zip back into IRLO Studio and keep editing. There is no project file to hunt for, because there never was one.
This works because every interaction keeps its settings inside the course itself. A drag-and-drop exercise, a branching scenario, or a question bank does not become flattened HTML on the way out. Its configuration travels in the package, so when the course comes back in, each block opens as the editable block it was. That holds even on a machine that never had the plugin that created it.
What changes when the course is the source
You stop managing two files. There is no project file to archive alongside every course, and no chance of the two drifting apart. The published package is the only version of the truth.
Your LMS already holds a copy. Every course you have uploaded is already backed up in the place you were always going to keep it. If you can download the package from the LMS, you can edit it.
Handoffs stop losing work. A contractor who delivers the course has delivered everything. There is nothing extra to request at the end of a project, and nothing to chase two years later.
You are not locked in. SCORM is an open standard, not a format one vendor controls. Your course does not depend on a particular tool version or license to stay editable.
What about courses built elsewhere?
The round trip described above is for courses built in IRLO Studio, where every block was designed to reopen. IRLO Studio can also import courses published by other authoring tools, but how much of each one comes back editable depends on the tool that made it. Some import almost completely. Others give you the content and assets, but not the interactions. The compatibility matrix lists what we have measured for each tool.
Either way, once a course has been saved from IRLO Studio, it has the same property as every other IRLO course. From then on, the course is the source.
The challenge
We want IRLO Studio to load any existing SCORM course, or any authoring tool's source file, for editing and reuse. That is a high bar, and we have set it on purpose.
Try it for yourself. If your content does not load, or does not come back the way you built it, let us know. Those are the challenges we are looking for.
Never lose the source again
The simplest way to stop losing source files is to stop having them. IRLO Studio has not launched yet. Join the early access waitlist, and when it opens, bring a course you have been afraid to touch, and see what it is like when the course is the source.