The integration of interaction and simulation in elearning systems represents a milestone in educational research and supports the student's learning process in innumerable ways. Nevertheless, current standards do not provide appropriate mechanisms to treat simulations as learning objects, which makes their integration into e-learning systems a hard task. This work proposes an architecture as extension to SCORM which includes a Tutoring Module for Simulations (TMS). The main objective consists in providing mechanisms to track and "observe" the student's actions while interacting with a simulation, thus enabling the TMS to take decisions or intervene when necessary, and/or to modify the simulation course.

The integration of interaction and simulation in elearning systems represents a milestone in educational research and supports the student's learning process in innumerable ways. Nevertheless, current standards do not provide appropriate mechanisms to obtain a significant assessment about the student's performance while interacting with a simulation neither to influence on the teaching-learning process. This work proposes a SCORM-compliant architecture which includes a Tutoring Module for Simulations (TMS). The main objective consists in providing mechanisms to track and "observe" the student's performance (while interacting with a simulation), thus enabling the TMS to take decisions or intervene when necessary, and/or to modify the course of the simulation.

According to new educational approaches, teaching models should implement instructional materials that allow the student to take a more active role allowing them to form "learning by doing." Educational simulations are a great example of this type of instructional material Teaching methods have evolved through these new educational approaches and also in response to the emergence of new technologies applicable to education. Elearning is a technology that reflects the evolution of computer-assisted teaching and has experienced strong growth in recent years.The most common meaning of e-learning is "learning through the Internet." The main motor of an e-learning system is the Learning Management System (LMS), which, among other things, is responsible for the distribution and management of access to learning content.Since the rise of e-learning has been of great interest the development and promotion of standards towards more interoperability between systems. Currently SCORM can be considered the most widely used standard for distributing and sharing learning resources in e-learning systems.The introduction of simulations in e-learning would be a great progress in the field of education, enabling the application of computing-assisted teaching methods within previously unimaginable context. However, when considering this type of complex content, it has resulted in new requirements for e-learning systems, which have not been fulfilled by SCORM.Existing approaches for integrating simulations with SCORM have met with limited success, since a simulation is perceived as a "black box" for a SCORM compliant LMS. This background has prompted interest in developing a proposal to give solution to the problem identified, for which we propose a software architecture that provides mechanisms to integrate different types of simulations in e-learning systems in a SCORM compliant-manner, and without the drawbacks of previous approaches.