Online Learning
Table of Contents
Section 2: Providing the Tools for Online Learning
Section 3: Authoring Tools for Creating Courses
Section 4: Distribution Capability for the Internet and Intranets
Section 5: Course Management for Facilitating User Access to Online Materials
Section 6: Building Upon the Power of Online Learning
Section 7: Creating a World of Opportunity
Section 8: Exploring the Technological Benefits
Section 9: The Power of Intranets
Section 10: Increasing Network Performance
Section 11: Protecting Resources with Security
Executive Summary
Wouldn't it be great if someday you could ?
Well, that someday is today. And companies like AT&T, Lucent, Metropolitan Life, and Boeing are doing just that with Online Learning - the killer application for the Internet today.
Around the world, managers are building a more knowledgeable and effective workforce?slashing training costs?while instantly measuring its effectiveness - all through Online Learning.
So what's the buzz about?
Online learning takes advantage of the Internet/Intranet and enables you to deliver training over the Web. It enables students or employees to take your training courses just by point-n-clicking with their browser - when and where they want it, even at home. And it lets you track and measure the performance of all who take the training.
Here's what the experts are saying
In a recent report, IDC forecasts the online learning market growing from $200 million today to $1 billion in the year 2000.
According to Montgomery Securities, "A technological revolution is occurring in the delivery of workplace training and education."
And in a recent Federal Computer Week report, training is the number one planned dollar expenditure for the U.S. Government software expenditure in 1998.
Here's how you'll benefit from Online Learning:
Training costs can be substantially reduced as online learning can be accomplished without the cost of instructors and classroom space, and without the travel expenses of flying people in from the field, or sending instructors out on the road for sessions
Numerous studies have shown that self-paced learning results in a greater level of retention by the participant
With online learning, the Internet and corporate intranets can be used to immediately make training available to workers, whether they are located across the hall, across the state, or across an ocean. The immediacy of just-in-time learning is enhanced by the fact that courseware can immediately be updated by just loading new information onto the server.
Online learning allows you to see automatically generated reports on how students are doing with each part of a course. This means students who need extra help can be given the attention they need. And it also provides immediate guidance as to which parts of the course students are encountering difficulty, and hence might be revised to provide better explanations. Getting started with Online Learning and Asymetrix
Asymetrix Learning Systems, Inc., a leader in Online Learning, is the only company in the industry which provides you with both the products and services to help get you up and running in Online Learning.
Asymetrix delivers a comprehensive, cross-platform set of products for creating and delivering online learning and is the only vendor to offer a family of authoring tools to meet the varying needs of different users within an organization.
Asymetrix also provides a centralized Internet-based course management system for all training courses including, online learning, traditional Computer Based Training (CBT) titles, customized training, or stand-up classroom teaching.
And Asymetrix Learning Services is one of the largest online learning service organizations in the country, offering learning services in the areas of consulting, development, support and training.
Providing the Tools for Online Learning
Deployment of online learning requires three essential elements:
Asymetrix, with its powerful suite of tools for the creation and management of computer-based training (CBT) is in a unique position to integrate its applications with Internet technology. Because the ToolBook II family is completely Internet\Intranet enabled, it provides the ideal foundation for deploying online learning solutions.
Authoring Tools for Creating Courses
Online learning means you can capture the knowledge of a classroom instructor or other subject matter expert and package their valuable information into an online training module that can be accessed by anyone with a Web browser - and your permission - from anywhere and at any time. But the first step in this knowledge transfer requires courseware authoring tools that are powerful, yet easy to use. Asymetrix accommodates this need with three proven products: ToolBook II Instructor, ToolBook II Assistant, and IconAuthor.
ToolBook II Instructor ToolBook II Assistant IconAuthor Net Edition and IconAuthor for Unix Distribution Capability for the Internet and Intranets
The Internet standards have done so much to unify, quite literally, the world of information, that Asymetrix created its ToolBook II family to be completely compatible with Internet standards. This compares with the current state of most CBT authoring tools, that don't produce applications that are based on Internet standards, meaning that Web browsers are unable to access these non-standard-based applications without requiring the viewers to configure their browsers with plug-ins.
To provide developers with even greater flexibility, Asymetrix also supports Web-browser add-ons, or plug-ins, for the Netscape Navigator browser and ActiveX Controls for the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser. In this way developers who want to push the envelope to create effects not supported by the browser have a solid foundation to plug into.
Providing Flexibility
ToolBook provides organizations with maximum flexibility in how they distribute content. Courses can be distributed on CD-ROM, online over the Internet or an intranet, or by using a combination of CD-ROM and online distribution. The combined approach might be used for a class that used a lot of video, which could be stored on a CD-ROM so that it didn't have to be downloaded across the network. While the video would be accessed via the CD-ROM, the actual training module would be delivered over the network - allowing for just-in-time updates so the material was always fresh, as well as the monitoring of progress and completion.
Course Management for Facilitating User Access to Online Materials
The benefits of online learning - ease of distribution, ability to do instant updates to course materials, and the round-the-clock access of classes to students anywhere around the globe - will mean that organizations will move more and more of their training and information distribution into this powerful delivery vehicle.
The rapid pace with which online learning is embraced creates new opportunities never before possible - such as with how courses are organized and made available to users, and how student progress is tracked. Asymetrix already provides a compelling solution for course management with ToolBook II Librarian.
ToolBook II Librarian Appreciating the Impact of Online Learning Computer-based training has already had a big impact on organizational learning. Over the past two decades, and especially during the last five years, organizations have increasingly used computers to support and streamline training and education. In a 1995 report, Training Magazine found that 48% of all U.S. companies used computer-based training as part of their overall training mix.
As the Internet and corporate intranets make distribution of just-in-time computer-based training less expensive and more accessible than ever, more and more organizations, and their students, will benefit. This widespread adoption is based on the significant advantages that computer-based training offers over instructor-led training. CBT advantages include:
Building Upon the Power of Online Learning
Asymetrix ToolBook is already the application of choice for creators of CD and LAN-based CBT courses. With ToolBook II, the power of Internet/intranet distribution is added, providing even more.
Of course there will always be a benefit to gathering people together, and making use of talented instructors, but as part of the overall mix of training, online learning with ToolBook II provides powerful benefits to the organization. Benefits of online learning include:
Lower Development Costs
The ToolBook II family of courseware authoring tools provide the power, flexibility, ease of use and platform independence that an organization needs to provide rapid response to training needs while minimizing development costs.
ToolBook II Instructor provides a powerful, yet easy to use complete development environment. While the templates and wizards of ToolBook II Assistant make the development of training modules so simple that trainers and subject matter experts can easily create their own online classes without the help of developers.
And because ToolBook II is so tightly integrated with Internet standards such as HTML and Java, organizations benefit from platform independence. ToolBook II Training modules created for online learning can be used by any computer equipped with a Java-enabled browser - such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. This means an organization can create training programs for just one platform, the Internet. This dramatically lowers costs. It's no longer necessary to face the difficult decision to develop for Windows, Macintosh, Unix, or other platforms.
Lower Distribution Costs
Even without Internet distribution, costs are already greatly reduced, as it is far cheaper to mail out classes on a CD-ROM than to either fly students in from the field or fly instructors out. Online learning lowers distribution costs even further because it is no longer necessary to manufacture CDs or send them to users.
The beauty of online learning is that once a training course has been installed on a Web server, it becomes immediately available to anyone in the world with Internet access, a Web browser, and proper authorization. When a training course needs to be altered, one simply makes the changes and updates the Web server with the new version. If an instructor notices that students are having trouble in a common area, they can immediately update the course to better present the material.
Online distribution also does away with the potentially significant costs associated with installing and maintaining the course on each user's personal computer -- costs that sometimes prohibit the frequent updating and improvement of training.
An additional benefit, which is subtle but significant, is that online learning provides a distribution model that allows employees to access training programs any time of the day or night, and employees tend to choose times that are least disruptive to their work.
Immediate Updates and Revisions
Few training applications are perfect when first released, and fewer still can exist for long without the need for updating information and making other revisions. While traditional CD-ROM applications may be updated only once a year, or less, online learning removes the manufacturing and logistical problems from updating. Because new versions can simply be put up on the Web server, large or small changes can be done at any time -- allowing users to instantly take advantage of the changes.
From a financial standpoint, online learning allows training to be delivered for the first time in a more cost-effective manner as compared to instructor led training, as well as CD-ROM distribution. This lower distribution cost in turn enables more frequent updates and revisions.
Distribution over the Internet and intranets provides online learning with a powerful twofold advantage: A greatly reduced cost of distribution, and the ability to immediately publish or post revisions to courses.
Easy Assessment and Certification
Online learning provides the ability to assess course effectiveness and track progress for certification. With traditional training, it is often difficult to verify that the training has been completed and the extent to which the information has been understood. As a result, it is difficult to measure the overall effectiveness of the training and the value of the investment.
Because the Internet supports two-way communication, online learning can track the performance of every learner, and individual results can be used as part of the management or education process.
The assessment of student progress can be used in formal and informal ways. As noted earlier, course designers can monitor results informally to identify areas in which students tend to have difficulty and then revise courseware to see if understanding increases.
From a formal standpoint, online training provides organizations the ability to certify that students have completed courses required by government workplace safety standards or other regulations. Online learning makes it easy to demonstrate that workers have received, and understand, the required training, and therefore meet the certification requirements. Online learning can also be used to ensure that resellers understand the products of a company well enough to represent them.
The ability to assess progress also makes online learning an excellent foundation for supporting formal certification or accredited degree programs.
Expanding Learning through Electronic Conversations
Online learning allows students to use the courseware when it is most convenient, which may well be during early morning or evening hours, and perhaps in a different time zone from their instructor. But the Internet is all about communication, and online learning can make good use of that.
Students can use electronic mail to communicate directly with instructors, with other students, or with participants on subject-matter bulletin boards and news groups. All the power of e-mail and electronic communities can be integrated into online learning.
In addition to such asynchronous communication, the technology is rapidly being deployed to allow real-time synchronous communications in the form of electronic classrooms, shared whiteboards, or most simply, with teleconferencing while everyone is logged on to the course. Asymetrix is already working with industry leaders to facilitate deployment of these new technologies with the ToolBook II family of applications, and will continue to integrate new technologies as they emerge, and as network bandwidth increases to support them.
Linking Into the Wealth of the Web
Because ToolBook II completely supports Internet standards such as HTML and Java, course designers can literally tap into a world of opportunities. On the corporate side, organizations are increasingly publishing internal documentation, technical materials and guides, marketing and sales data, and a vast array of other information in HTML format for use on their private intranets, as well as their external Web sites. Any of these materials can be easily integrated into a ToolBook II training module by just pointing to it with an HTML link. From a more global perspective, a course developer can selectively harvest value added materials from the staggering wealth of the World Wide Web, again with just the insertion of a simple link. The ToolBook II support of Internet standards means that when designing a course, one truly has a world of potential at their fingertips.
A Constant Resource and Reference
Deployment of online learning, when managed by ToolBook II Librarian, can become a living body of work, and a constant resource and reference for everyone in an organization. ToolBook II learning modules can be accessed as structured courses, or browsed as encyclopedic references. This means that a graduate from a course (or even someone who has never taken it) can use the material as immediately accessible informational guides. This can have a profoundly positive effect on learners and their organizations. It transforms training materials from one-time experiences to constant companions. And it provides the vital relevance of Just-in-Time training.
Just-in-Time Training
The concept of Just-in-Time training is becoming ever more relevant in organizational training because of the rapid pace with which technology, work projects, and the marketplace are changing. With online learning, Just-in-Time training is accompanied by the benefits of lower total cost of training, and automatic tracking of results.
Online learning allows a type of Just-in-Time training that has never before been possible, and will revolutionize the way training is produced and distributed.
Just-in-Time training requires the ability to both create and distribute courses quickly. And ToolBook II provides the robust set of integrated applications required for accomplishing both sides of the Just-in-Time training challenge:
Ease of Use for Just-in-Time Course Authoring
Just-in-Time training places a lot of pressure on the development cycle. Take too long to create a training module, and the product or service it describes may have already become obsolete. Fortunately the Asymetrix ToolBook II family of applications has the power and ease of use to make course development a smooth and enjoyable process.
From the powerful and fully featured development environment provided by ToolBook II Instructor, to the drag-and-drop, wizard-driven simplicity of ToolBook II Assistant, The ToolBook II family provides the tools needed for Just-in-Time course authoring.
These authoring tools make course creation faster because they?re much easier to use than traditional tools. Rather than relying on a few specialized developers, companies can now rely upon their training people, and experts in the relevant areas, to create training courses and modules.
Online Learning for Just-in-Time Course Delivery and Availability
The Internet is ideal medium for just-in-time delivery. And ToolBook's integration with Internet standards makes it ideal for the kind of Just-in-Time course delivery and availability that we call online learning. Once a course is developed it can immediately be placed upon the Web server and made available to learners throughout the world. And, again, updates and revisions are painless and instantaneous. Just update the course file on the server.
ToolBook II Librarian provides the ideal environment for online learning - placing the pooled knowledge of all your training modules just a point-and-click away from those who need the information.
The kind of Just-in-Time access that ToolBook II Librarian allows is obviously good for the organization, but it is also good for the individuals in need of the knowledge. Just-in-Time means that if a sales rep has an early morning presentation to make, they can immediately access and electronically search the courses you've created to find the information they need to accomplish their job.
Just-in-Time delivery is significant for factory workers, too. As manufacturing jobs become more sophisticated, and downsizing requires workers to perform an ever greater number of tasks of increasing complexity, the costs of a misstep are severe in a competitive global economy. A worker forgetting details of a precision task such as changing out a part, providing maintenance, or changing settings for a new product run, must either occupy the time of an expert on the factory floor, or do without the knowledge necessary to do their job, which is worse.
A powerful feature of online learning and Just-in-Time delivery is that the material is always available to the student. Rather than relying on training they received once, they can look at it whenever they like, such as right before performing maintenance on a machine or beginning a new assignment. With Just-in-Time delivery they can study a set of job procedures or other information as often as they like, and focus on exactly the areas in which they need reassurance.
With traditional instructor-led courses, handouts and other written documentation might be at home, long lost, or out of date when needed by the worker. But online learning can be immediately available from the employee's workstation. The instant access provided by ToolBook II Librarian means that up-to-the-moment training materials will be available when a highly motivated person returns to them in need of learning. This powerful technology enables a new type of needs-based training.
Creating a World of Opportunity
The power of ToolBook II and its ability to support robust online learning with Just-in-Time course authoring and Just-in-Time course distribution and availability creates a world of opportunity for meeting the needs of learners. Shown below is just a starting point for the many ways that distributed learning can dramatically enhance the training and education process. Online learning opportunities include:
Exploring the Technological Benefits
Online learning, when deployed with the tightly integrated Internet standards that are at the core of the ToolBook II family of applications, provides the same technological benefits that have made the Internet such a ubiquitous and driving force in worldwide communications today. To better appreciate the technological benefits of online learning, it is helpful to consider:
The Emergence of the Internet
The adoption of the Internet and, more specifically, the World Wide Web, has been phenomenal and there are three primary reasons for this:
These same reasons for general acceptance - universal access, ease-of-use, and support for multimedia content - will also fuel the Internet's and World Wide Web's acceptance as a revolutionary tool for training and education.
The Power of Intranets
Corporations and other organizations are now using Internet standards to create private intranets - allowing them to create their own custom versions of the World Wide Web - while retaining the ability to transparently connect to the full Web, as well as grant permission for users outside their organization to access their intranets.
Simply put, an intranet is the use of Internet and Web technology as the basis of an organization's internal network. Because an organization has complete control over its intranet, it is able to control issues such as network performance and security, issues that can not always be controlled when using the public Internet.
As a result, many intranets are much more advanced than the Internet as a whole, which is why the most interesting use of Internet technology to deliver training will first occur on intranets. How training is being delivered over intranets today, will serve as a model for how training will be delivered over the Internet in the future.
Going Beyond Proprietary Content with Standards-Based Information
The native Internet standards that are integrated into ToolBook II applications give organizations the immensely important freedom to go beyond the confines of proprietary information that is locked into a specific courseware development platform.
Most CBT authoring tools don't produce applications that are based on Internet standards. As a result, Web browsers are unable to provide access to these non-standard-based applications without the use of plug-ins, which can complicate system administration, especially when plug-ins must be updated to match different versions of software.
The flexibility of ToolBook II allows plug-ins to be used, but the complete Internet integration of ToolBook II means that plug-ins aren't required unless a developer wants to provide special functionality that isn't supported by Internet standards. The beauty of ToolBook II's integration with Internet standards, is that as these standards continue to rapidly evolve, ToolBook II applications will be able to take advantage of the advances.
Another benefit of native Internet support is that there is an already large and rapidly growing pool of knowledge workers who have acquired easy-to-learn HTML programming skills. Such HTML skills will be easier to obtain, and more relevant across the enterprise, than finding someone who has mastered a proprietary CBT system.
And yet another benefit of having Internet standards built into your online learning platform is the incredible wealth of information that is being collected and put on the Internet. Course developers working with Internet standards can easily link courses to the realm of internal content created for a private intranet, and to the world of content out on the World Wide Web.
Increasing Network Performance
One of the greatest areas of interest with the Internet is increasing its bandwidth, or the rate at which information moves across the network. There are huge commercial pressures for total Internet bandwidth to be increased, and fortunately the technology in the form of faster modems and switching gear is being deployed in successive waves.
Today network performance can be a bottleneck, especially when delivering full-motion video over the Internet.
From a corporate standpoint, network performance is much more controllable than what is found out on the full Internet. ATM switching, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and other networking technologies are allowing the creation of intranets that can support full motion video and teleconferencing. This means that a training course delivered over a corporate intranet can be as rich in multimedia as the bandwidth allows.
But if delivering training to a branch office over the Internet media-rich applications could experience latency. Fortunately ToolBook II courses can easily be integrated with CD-ROMs in such a way that the main course content is accessed online (for easy distribution, updating, and to support two-way communication) while video-intensive sections can be accessed from the CD. Again, there are huge financial incentives for the telephone companies and internet service providers to continuously upgrade the bandwidth for such remote users. Another significant development is the technology of streaming media.
Streaming Media
The technology of streaming media provides an innovative solution for delivering rich media such as video without requiring extraordinary network bandwidth. Streaming eliminates the delay caused by awaiting large downloads because it doesn't require that a file be completely delivered before playing.
Streaming breaks a large media file, such as a video, into small packets for transport across the net. At the user's machine, the packets are buffered, or temporarily stored, for smooth delivery and played as they stream in - then discarded so they don't overwhelm the hard drive.
As streaming technology emerges there are natural market forces demanding it adhere to Internet standards for ubiquitous delivery. And because of our integration with Internet standards, anything that can run over the Internet can be used as part of a ToolBook II application.
Online Collaboration and Communication
Online collaboration and communication can be one of the most important building blocks of a total learning environment. And the two-way communication allowed by the Internet provides the foundation for making this part of online learning.
Communication can be either asynchronous or synchronous. Asynchronous communication includes e-mail, newsgroups, and discussion threads. Synchronous communication enables a virtual classroom, where students and instructors can talk to one another at exactly the same time at a distance. Examples of this are video or teleconferencing, shared whiteboards, and chat rooms.
Audio conferencing over the Internet is already broadly available, even though video conferencing requires proprietary technology. Audio goes a long ways towards supporting a live atmosphere, and video is often not that important. Many of these collaborative capabilities are being integrated into the Internet platform itself, such as Web browsers and Web servers, which means that as collaborative tools become common feature of the Internet, ToolBook II will automatically be able to take advantage of these.
ToolBook II Instructor is the world's most powerful authoring tool for professional course developers to create highly customized training applications. Instructor provides everything required to create cost-effective, interactive, multimedia applications, simulations, and performance-support applications. Ease of use is built into Instructor with more than 200 pre-scripted drag-and drop interactive objects. Object categories include: Question Types, Action Buttons, Bookmarks, 3D layout elements, Data Validation, Media Clip Objects, Navigation, Response Checking, Special Fields, Tools and Examples. And ToolBook's OpenScript® provides powerful yet easy-to-use scripting, which can be used to create custom objects.
ToolBook II Assistant, the newest addition to the ToolBook II family, is the world's easiest-to-use authoring tool for full and part-time trainers to create high impact training applications. Assistant was designed with users in mind whose primary responsibility is to deliver, not develop training. Assistant allows anyone to quickly create training and educational courseware without programming, scripting, or the help of a developer. It's as simple as point-and-click, drag-and-drop. Assistant also includes wizards and templates to further simplify course creation. Because all ToolBook applications are completely integrated, training modules created in Assistant can also be worked on within Instructor for further customization, as well as be deployed over the Internet or corporate intranets.
For course developers and multimedia professionals creating interactive training applications, IconAuthor is the most powerful icon-based multi-platform solution for creating engaging, robust interactive learning applications for CD-ROM, network, and Internet delivery. Combining a visual page layout environment with a simple, yet powerful flowchart to establish the flow and interactivity of the application, there's no scripting or programming to learn. IconAuthor's Universal Media Access technology separates application content from logic. This enables easy application updates, powerful templating capabilites and the ability to create hybrid applications delivered via the Internet and intranets, local area networks and CD-ROM.
ToolBook II Librarian is the industry's only course management system designed specifically for managing the delivery of training and education over the global Internet and internal intranets. Librarian is server-based software that runs in combination with Web and database servers and is available for both Windows NT and Solaris UNIX. Built on the powerful Java network programming language, Librarian is designed to manage the complete process for delivering training and education over the Internet. Using Librarian, students are able to easily access courseware anywhere on the Internet, and administrators are able to track and record student progress, test results, and other valuable feedback.