Introduction: Why I Built Remote Reviewer
I’ve spent most of my career working in and around learning systems, LMSs, reporting tools, analytics dashboards, and standards like xAPI. One thing kept standing out to me: we’re actually pretty good at tracking learning activity, but we’re not great at capturing real-world performance.
Workplace tasks, observed practice, simulations, on-the-job demonstrations, these are often assessed remotely, inconsistently, or with evidence scattered across emails, shared drives, or proprietary tools. And almost none of that sits cleanly inside a learning ecosystem.
What Is Remote Reviewer (in xAPI Terms)?
That gap is what led me to build Remote Reviewer.
- Not as an LMS.
- Not as an analytics engine.
- But as an xAPI Activity Provider purpose-built to capture authentic performance evidence and assessment decisions, wherever the learning happens.
At its core, Remote Reviewer is an Activity Provider.
In xAPI language, that means it is a system that hosts or facilitates an experience, observes what happens during that experience, and emits structured xAPI statements describing the activity, evidence, and outcomes.
Remote Reviewer doesn’t teach content. It doesn’t enrol learners. And it doesn’t replace an LMS. Instead, it sits alongside those systems and focuses on one thing:
Capturing assessable evidence of real-world performance and the professional judgement applied to it.
How Remote Reviewer Uses xAPI
Remote Reviewer uses xAPI deliberately and conservatively. The goal isn’t volume, it’s meaningful, auditable statements.
Each review represents a single xAPI activity with clearly defined context, actor roles, and metadata. Evidence such as video or audio is explicitly linked, not inferred. Reviewer observations, task set outcomes, time-stamped decisions, and final results are captured as structured data against an xAPI Profile.
These statements are then sent to a Learning Record Store in an open format, allowing them to be combined with LMS data, simulation data, or analytics tools without being locked into a proprietary platform.
Where Remote Reviewer Fits in the Total Learning Architecture (TLA)
The Total Learning Architecture provides a conceptual framework for modern learning ecosystems — one where learning, performance, and data flow across multiple systems rather than being confined to a single LMS.
Within this framework, Remote Reviewer sits in the experience and performance layer. It does not deliver learning content or manage enrolments, and it does not attempt to replace analytics or reporting platforms.
Instead, its role is to capture authentic performance experiences, structure assessment evidence, and emit trustworthy xAPI data that can be shared with other systems across the ecosystem. This allows real-world performance evidence to relate to learning records, reporting tools, and broader analytics without locking it inside a single platform.
Why This Matters Beyond the LMS
In decentralised learning environments, workforce training, VET, compliance, simulation-based learning, the LMS is rarely where the most important evidence lives.
Performance happens on worksites, in simulated environments, and in real-world contexts. Remote Reviewer allows those experiences to exist as first-class citizens in the learning ecosystem.
xAPI is what makes that possible.
By treating assessment as an activity rather than a checkbox, learning, performance, and evidence can finally be connected in a way that is open, auditable, and future-proof.
Remote Reviewer wasn’t built to replace existing systems. It was built to connect the parts we’ve been ignoring.
As an xAPI Activity Provider, it plays a focused but important role in a broader learning ecosystem, one aligned with the principles of the Total Learning Architecture and the realities of real-world performance.
You can get started for free and see what it is all about. You even get a Learning Record Store or create one with Veracity
