Moodle won't export SCORM. Its backup can, with a little help.
Upload the .mbz. Get an editable course and a SCORM, cmi5 or xAPI package. User data is never imported.
Last reviewed
Moodle cannot export a course as SCORM; a .mbz backup only restores into another Moodle site. To get a SCORM package, import the .mbz into a tool that reads Moodle backups and export from there. Scormbusters reads backups from Moodle 1.9 to 4.x — pages, books, labels, files and the quiz questions it has an equivalent for, with their answers — and exports SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, cmi5 or xAPI.
In our test corpus that was every word and 48% of quiz questions. Forums, assignments and other activities that need Moodle to run bring their instructions only. User data in the backup is never imported.
- Moodle has no built-in export of a course as a SCORM package; a .mbz backup restores only into Moodle.
- Scormbusters reads Moodle backups from 1.9 to 4.x (.mbz, zip or tar.gz).
- Sections become modules; pages, labels and books become content; resources and folders become downloads; quiz questions become question blocks with answers where Scormbusters has an equivalent question type.
- Measured on 5 real Moodle backups (Moodle 1.9, 2.4 and 2.9): every word came across, and 48% of quiz questions; calculated, essay, drag-and-drop-onto-image and random short-answer matching questions and surveys are listed in the import report instead.
- Forums, assignments and other activities bring their instructions only; the report lists what was left behind.
- User data in a backup (accounts, posts, submissions, attempts) is never imported, only counted in the report.
- Exports: SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, cmi5 and xAPI.
Your options
- Restore into another Moodle. If the destination is Moodle, backup and restore is the right tool and keeps everything.
- Use the destination LMS’s own importer. Some LMSs import Common Cartridge or Moodle content directly; check yours first.
- Extract the text to a document. Open-source scripts and services pull page text out of a backup for review or a rebuild.
- Import into Scormbusters and export SCORM. You get an editable course and a package any SCORM-conformant LMS can run.
How the backup is read
A Moodle backup is a tree of XML files described by moodle_backup.xml: the course, its sections, each activity’s own data, the question bank and every file, stored by content hash. Scormbusters walks it in course order and rebuilds the content as lessons of blocks designed for WCAG 2.1 AA. Moodle 1.9’s single moodle.xml is read too.
What we measured
The importer is re-run on every release against 5 real Moodle backups from public repositories: backups from Moodle 1.9, 2.4 and 2.9, both as downloaded (.mbz, zip and tar.gz) and unpacked. Every word came across and 48% of quiz questions; the question types without an equivalent, listed above, account for most of the rest. Backups from Moodle 3.x and 4.x use the same format, but no public 3.x or 4.x backup is in the corpus yet, so run the free rebuild preview on yours first. The import scorecard has the per-tool figures.
Frequently asked questions
Can Moodle export a course as a SCORM package?
No. Moodle can play SCORM packages, and its backup (.mbz) restores a course into another Moodle site, but it has no built-in way to package a course as SCORM for a different LMS.
Which Moodle backups does Scormbusters read?
Course backups from Moodle 1.9 to 4.x — the .mbz file, whether it is the zip older sites wrote or the tar.gz written since Moodle 2.6 — or the unpacked backup folder, zipped.
What comes across?
Sections become modules and activities become lessons, in course order. Pages, labels and books become content; files and folders become downloads; quiz questions become question blocks with their correct answers, drawn from the course's question bank, where Scormbusters has an equivalent question type.
Do all quiz questions come across?
No. Across the 5 real Moodle backups in our test corpus, 48% of quiz questions came across. Calculated, essay, drag-and-drop-onto-image and random short-answer matching questions, and surveys, have no equivalent yet; the import report lists each one so you can rebuild it or leave it out.
What about forums, assignments and other activities?
They need Moodle to run — people posting, submitting, grading — so they cannot become part of a self-contained SCORM package. Their instructions are imported, and the import report lists what was left behind.
Is student data imported?
Never. A backup can include accounts, forum posts, submissions and quiz attempts. None of it is imported; the report only counts what was there, so you know it was left out.
Bring one stuck course. See what comes back.
Upload the published zip and play it rebuilt as an editable course, with the list of anything to rebuild by hand. No account, no card; the private link lasts seven days.