L&D & eLearning glossary

AI course generation is the use of AI to turn source material — documents, PDFs, slides, or URLs — into a structured course with lessons, slides, narration, and assessments automatically.

An AI LMS is a learning management system that uses AI to generate course content from your documents — not just host and track it — then delivers, assesses, and reports on that training in one place.

Blended learning combines online, self-paced training with in-person or live instruction, letting each format do what it does best.

cmi5 is an xAPI profile that adds standardized rules for launching, authorizing, and reporting course content from an LMS — bringing SCORM-style packaging and launch to the more flexible xAPI data model.

Completion rate is the percentage of assigned learners who finish a course or training program — a core metric for engagement and compliance.

Compliance training is mandatory workforce training that ensures employees understand laws, regulations, and company policies — with documented completion for audits.

HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is the U.S. law that sets national standards for protecting individuals' health information, enforced by the HHS Office for Civil Rights through its Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules.

Instructional design is the practice of structuring content and activities so people actually learn — defining objectives, sequencing material, and building assessments that measure understanding.

A Learning Experience Platform (LXP) is learner-centric software that emphasizes content discovery, personalization, and recommendations, often layered alongside or on top of an LMS.

A Learning Management System (LMS) is software for creating, delivering, and tracking training courses — including enrollment, assessments, completion records, and certificates.

A Learning Record Store (LRS) is a database that collects, stores, and retrieves the xAPI learning records — "actor–verb–object" statements — sent by courses, apps, simulations, and other learning activities.

Microlearning is a training approach that delivers content in short, focused units — typically a few minutes each — designed to teach one objective at a time.

OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is the U.S. Department of Labor agency that sets and enforces workplace safety and health standards under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.

SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) is a widely used e-learning standard that packages a course so it can be deployed and tracked in any SCORM-compliant LMS.

Security awareness training teaches employees to recognize and respond to cybersecurity threats — such as phishing, social engineering, and unsafe data handling — and is an explicit requirement under several U.S. regulatory frameworks.

A white-label LMS is a learning platform you can rebrand as your own — your logo, colors, and domain instead of the vendor’s — so learners and client admins see your brand, not the software provider’s.

xAPI (the Experience API, formerly Tin Can API) is a learning data standard that records a wide range of learning experiences — online, offline, and outside the LMS — as "actor-verb-object" statements.