The DoD has to take its training efforts seriously because they are a matter of life and death. Beginning in WWI, the armed forces, dealing with 'shell shocked' thousands of veterans began researching for ways to do its job better without sending soldiers needlessly to death or injury. Today, all of the armed forces work with experts in learning science, training, and leader education to develop and integrate its learning approaches. In the words of Major General Robert Scales, "The new learning environment should center on the student, not the institution, with every learning opportunity crafted to ensure that the right methods, both pedagogical and methodological, are used to give the military learner just what is needed.... ". (US Army Study, 2008) This approach should sound familiar to all progressive educators. In order for the armed forces to organize the immense training requirements to keep their soldiers skilled in thousands of different crucial roles they play, as well as the necessary human and organizational training requirements, a move had to be made away from the millions of paper filled binders to e-learning. (Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2009) ADL, Advanced Distributed Learning was created by the Department of Defense to standardize training assets and support cooperative development of standards on a global scale. This standardization, launched in 1997, is called SCORM, the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (Academic ADL Co-Lab, 2008).

LCMSs (Learning Content Management Systems) are huge storage and retrieval management systems that keep track of training at a granular level. These units of instructional design and their assets are called a Reuseable Learning Object. 

Because of the efficiency of personal delivery and efficient management, the SCORM standard is also used in many e-learning environments outside of the DoD. Industries which require complex educational management, especially as they relate to regulatory compliance prefer SCORM based LCMSs  because the organization of data required produces better quality results at much more rapid launch speeds (Perry, 2009). Though CMS, LMS and LCMS are organized to meet the needs of different types of clients, SCORM can benefit them all. Many CMS and LCMS for education have complied with the system, too, including Florida Virtual School, Blackboard and even udutu.com. (Wirth, n.d.)