COMPUTER-BASED TRAINING PRODUCTS
Course Content
High quality computer-based training products have the following course content characteristics:
Clear description of course content exists.
A clear description of the content is needed to help you make a quick decision on whether to examine the product further.
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Course content is accurate and up-to-date.
If the product contains inaccurate data or is several years old, it won't be appropriate. Unlike wine, computer-based training does not age well. If you are hiring a customizer, the customizer should be knowledgeable about the issues to be taught and understand your subject matter. While customizers do not have to be experts on your subject themselves, they need to understand it well enough to take content information provided by experts, and incorporate it into a computer-based training package.
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Course content fulfills company training requirements.
The product needs to meet your training needs as closely as possible. If there is a gap between your needs and what the product provides, you will have to acquire additional instruction to meet your training goals.
Most off-the-shelf products will not meet 100 percent of your needs,
though some may come close. Customizable products should help decrease the
gap between your needs and what the product offers. A fully customized product
should meet all of your needs completely. A customizer should know how to
develop a CBT product that will meet your training needs for both the content
and instructional design characteristics.
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Instructional objectives are clearly stated.
Objectives tell you what the product was designed to do. Each objective should contain an audience, a behavior, a condition, and a degree. This is often called the ABCDs of objectives. For example, in the following objective, "Upon completion of unit 12, the trainee will be able to identify, with no errors, the mean and standard deviation in a statistical chart," the audience is the trainee, the behavior is identify the mean and standard deviation, the condition is completion of unit 12, and the degree is 100 percent (without error).
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Instructional objectives are divided into appropriate sub-categories.
Objectives should be broken up by category so you can measure your training gains effectively. Ideally, each section of the product should have its own specific objectives.
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Training gains are measurable.
Your training gains should be directly related to the instructional objectives of the product. If the objectives are clearly stated, especially the degree of each objective, they should be easy to measure.
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Course is designed for intended trainees.
The product should be graded or scaled in such a way that you can quickly know if it is at the appropriate training level. If the product is too easy for your trainees they will be bored and learn little. On the other hand, if the product is too difficult or advanced, your trainees will be frustrated and again learn little.
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Customization is always a plus for any product. Only fully customized computer-based training will meet your exact needs, but if you can identify a product that you can customize, you can approach this ideal at a fraction of the cost of fully customized computer-based training.
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Course Delivery
High quality computer-based training products have the following course delivery characteristics:
The courseware should be bug free and run on your system smoothly, without crashing.
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Instructional format is appropriate.
The format -- tutorial, drill and practice, training games, simulation, problem solving, and demonstration/presentation -- must work for your training needs. (See the introduction for more detail on the different instructional formats and their uses.)
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Degree of interactivity meets training requirements.
Active learning is more likely to stick than passive learning. As the old saying goes:
"Tell me and I'll forget.
Teach me and I'll remember.
Involve me and I'll learn."
Also, if your training requirements specify that trainees must demonstrate certain skills upon completion of the training, the product should provide the interactivity or "hands-on" time to practice these skills.
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Training features are appropriate.
The use of text, graphics, video, and sound in the product are an integral part of the training. They should be used when and where they are needed. A customizer's products should demonstrate expertise in the training features appropriate for your proposed training.
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Course provides appropriate feedback for correct or incorrect answers.
Trainees need to know when they are on the right track. Feedback (the computer responding to what the trainee does) is very important. It allows trainees to assess their progress and adjust accordingly.
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The product should be easy to operate. Navigation is best accomplished via a menu or some other easily understood device. The screen advance should be user controlled. If appropriate, trainees should be able to bypass instructions they don't need. There should be a non-frustrating method for answering questions, i.e., using a space bar or clicking the mouse button instead of typing an answer.
A customizer's products should demonstrate "look and feel"
expertise. You should be able to maneuver through the products easily, choose
a specific instructional sequence from all instruction available, and answer
questions easily.
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Course directions are clearly understandable.
The trainee should always know what to do next, how to proceed to the next screen or topic, etc.
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On-line glossary is available for definition of technical terms.
If jargon, acronyms, or obtuse terms are used in the product, the trainee should be able to quickly and easily access definitions within the product.
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Keyboard skill requirements match trainees' skills.
If your trainees have low keyboarding skills, a product that forces them to input paragraphs of text is inappropriate. The keyboarding requirements of the product should be equal to or lower than the trainees' keyboarding skills, unless the product is designed to increase these skills.
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Course Implementation
High quality computer-based training products have the following course implementation characteristics:
CBT is available when the company needs it.
If you need the training right away, the product should actually exist and not be "under development." If you are using an off-site class, the off-site class should already have the product and have it installed.
A customizer should be able to complete the course in time to meet a company's needs. To check a customizer's reliability, you may want to ask to see past development time lines for products it has developed. Check to make sure the customizer met these development deadlines. Ask the customizer for a list of past clients you can contact about this issue.
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Easy-to-use student management system exists to track trainee progress, print records, and prescribe instruction.
A management system will enable you to monitor your trainees and document their progress. A good management system will either prescribe instructions directly to trainees as needed, or show you what you need to prescribe to your trainees. You can check the management systems in other products a customizer developed to determine its skills in this area.
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System can accommodate multiple trainees simultaneously.
It is only important for the system to accommodate multiple trainees simultaneously if you are running the product on a network or off of a file server. In that case, the product should be designed to work well in this environment. If you will be serving multiple trainees at the same time, it is important that a customizer have a history of developing products that work well in networked environments, where the product is stored on a file server linked to many computers.
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System accomodates security needs.
If you work with on-line, proprietary information, the product should be protected from unauthorized access via passwords or codes. Unauthorized people should not be able to access the product, nor should people using the product be able to enter other connected, restricted electronic areas. Unauthorized people should not be able to access any records kept on individual trainees. If security is an issue for you, be sure to check the security systems in other products a customizer developed.
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Course Design
High quality computer-based training products have the following course design characteristics:
Subject-matter experts were used to design the course.
One way of ensuring the quality of the training is determining whether subject matter experts were used to develop the product's content. You should be able to verify this easily. Another benefit of expert involvement is that you may be able to contact these experts when a content-related question arises. If you will be having a product customized, checking designer resumes is another way to ensure the product developed will be top quality.
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Course was field-tested before it was released.
It is important that the product was tested in an environment similar to yours before it was available for sale to the public. This will increase the likelihood that any problems specific to your conditions were eradicated earlier. The product developer should be able to tell you what field testing was undertaken.
If you are having a product customized, it should be bug free when it
is delivered to you. The only way any customizer can ensure this is to test
it on an audience similar to your trainees during the development process.
This audience might well by your own employees. However, if your employees
are used, the provider should make a commitment to refine the program based
on a trial period of use.
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Not only should the product be free of sex/racial/age/ethnic stereotypes, it should be free of any biases that make it harder for some people to learn than others. These biases frequently arise when instruction is culturally based.
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Course is part of a product line.
In some cases, you might want the course to be part of an integrated product line containing other courses that may be useful to you at a later time. If you decide to use another course in the same product line, your instructors or trainees will need little or no training to operate the program because the new course should function similarly to the first one.
If you think you will want additional, related training programs in the
future, it is important to examine the long-term viability of the product
developer or customizer and its ability to develop the other programs you
may need. Think about your future development needs up front; make tentative
plans for your future.
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Instructional Support
High quality computer-based training products have the following instructional supports:
Course includes supporting materials.
A manual that explains to the trainer how the product is to be used is essential. Off-line workbooks that explain and supplement the product are very useful for trainees to take with them and work on when they can't access the CBT itself. You should check the support materials in other products a customizer developed to see if they would meet your needs.
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Course updates are available and at a reasonable cost.
All software requires periodic updating. Operating system software and computer capabilities change constantly, and the CBT package must change accordingly. Update costs should not be more than 30 percent of the original purchase price. You should examine the long-term viability of a customizer and its history of providing updates to its previous clients.
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A train-the-trainer option allows you to send your trainers to the developer for instruction on how to use the product to train other people. The trainers can then return to your organization and successfully implement the product. If you are hiring a customizer, you should check the training programs for other products it developed to see if they meet your needs.
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Technical Support
High quality computer-based training products have the following technical supports:
Specifications on exactly what hardware and configurations the product was designed to operate with should be available. Installation and trouble-shooting suggestions should be included as well. A name and process for contacting technical support should be readily available.
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Maintenance agreement is available.
A maintenance contract between you and the provider of the product should be available as an option. Maintenance should include updates, bug-fixes, and priority technical support.
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If a product developer offers phone support, you could quickly contact the developer, via the telephone, when a technical or operational problem arises. The developer could then work with you to solve the problem. During the evaluation of a product, look for a technical support 800 number to defray operating costs after purchase.
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On-line support enables you to quickly contact the product developer, via on-line services, when a technical or operational problem arises. The developer could then work with you to solve the problem. This generally is not as fast as telephone support, but can allow you to write a concise statement of the problem and receive a concise reply.
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A field representative that can come on-site when requested is a valuable technical support resource you can use when telephone or on-line support are not sufficient.
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You may want the developer to come on-site to configure, or set up, your system to run the CBT product effectively.
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As your computer system grows, you may need to reconfigure your system to run the CBT product effectively. You might want the product developer to offer this assistance.
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Technological Compatibility
Computer-based training products should have the following technological compatibility characteristics:
Platform requirements match the company's existing system.
It is important that the product run on your existing computers, unless you plan to upgrade your computer technology. If you already have a computer system in place, a customizer must be able to develop the product so it runs on that hardware, unless you are willing to purchase new hardware.
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Storage requirements match the company's existing system.
You need to be able to store a product you purchase on your computer system without overtaxing your storage requirements, and a customizer needs to be able to develop a course compatible with your existing storage capacity. Because the storage capacities of modern computer systems have increased dramatically, and many new products are now available on CD-ROM, this is not nearly as much of a concern as it used to be.
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Memory requirements match the company's existing system.
TThe product should be able to run on your current computer system with no additional memory requirements, and a customizer needs to be able to develop a course compatible with your existing memory capacity, unless you are prepared to purchase expansions. Most products today state their memory requirements in terms on megabytes (MB) of random access memory (RAM).
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Peripherals required match the company's existing system.
Some computer-based training products require additional hardware, such as printers, to function effectively. You need to make sure you have any of these extra devices if they are needed. A customizer should be able to provide you with a product that will not use extra devices you don't currently have, unless you are willing to purchase them.
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Review Option
High quality computer-based training products have the following review options:
Inspection copy is available and satisfactory.
An inspection copy or demonstration disk of the product should be available. This is a very valuable way for you to perform an initial evaluation of any product. The demo disk should be free, or if there is a charge, you should be able to deduct this charge from the purchase price of the product. For a customized product, previous work should be available for review and should be satisfactory. Reviewing previous work is the best way to determine whether a customizer can meet many of the requirements discussed in this section.
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Trial period is allowed and satisfactory.
Most computer-based training products have a trial or test period after you purchase the product. During this time you can return the product for a refund if it does not meet your needs. Generally, you will need several months to determine this fact, so look for a trial period of 90 days or more.
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References or reviews are available and satisfactory.
You should examine any reviews a journal or magazine conducted on the product you're examining. The reviews will help you decide whether to purchase the product or not. When hiring a customizer, it is important to check with previous clients and obtain several opinions on the quality of the customizer's work.
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Questions? Contact Brett Bixler.