Cross-platform Computer-Based Training?

TeachingMachines asks: "They say that if you can't do, you teach, and if you can't teach, you teach P.E. Well, what happens when P.E. teachers become interested in programming? Wimpy educators like myself need very high-level Rapid Application Development or similar authoring environments for Computer-Based Training (CBT) so that we can call ourselves '3133t HackerZ'. Throughout my graduate training students typically used one of the two most popular authoring environments: Macromedia's popular Authorware (for Mac and MS) and Click2Learn's infinitely more powerful ToolBook (for MS only, ugh). Are there any really good authoring environments for CBT that are truly cross-platform compatible (i.e. support Linux/Solaris/Mac9/MacOSX/MS)? I ask that because a new kid showed up on the block called Norpath Elements Studio that looks to be highly integrated with Java and deploys multimedia applications cross platform. Is anyone aware of similar tools, proprietary or not?"

Comments

SkillSoft might work for you

[vjl]

A few years ago we used CBT Systems courseware. It was 100% java based and accessible via the w3. Now they've been bought out by SkillSoft/Smartforce. The CBT courses covered everything from Word to Visual Basic to SQL to UNIX sysadmin'ing. There were even several Mac technology courses too.

They have demos online you might want to check out. More info is at:

SkillSoft

/vjl/ [no, i don't work for them :) ]

Re:SkillSoft might work for you

[SwedishChef]

SkillSoft didn't work for me... at least not using Galeon. I got an error telling me I needed to enable Java. Which, of course, is already enabled. So much for cross-platform

So then I tried it on Mozilla 0.9.8 and it puked again.

Finally, what the hell, I fired up my venerable Netscape 4.78 and, Viola!, it worked. I learned that MS Exchange server will cost lots more to implement than just using sendmail on a Linux box at each office. New administrators, new servers, new software... whew! No wonder there are so many MCSEs.

Nice java when it finally worked, though. Jave would likely be the best way to implement cross platform products for this application... but it's wise to make sure that it really works across platforms. This one doesn't.

Coursebuilder?

[GregWebb]

Macromedia certainly used to produce an addon for Dreamweaver called Coursebuilder which, IIRC (only looked at it briefly, it's only of peripheral relevance to my job) was rather nice and a free add-on.

Toolbook produces strange HTML which doesn't translate that nicely to stuff other than Win/IE from what I recall. Authorware I've not noticed I've come across. Flash / Director require plugins (duh...), Director is a pain to integrate into a Learning Management System. Seminar4Web is another I've come across - again, only really works well with Win/IE and even then it's a little strange to put it tactfully. It's also rather expensive.

I'd look at what you're looking to do, though. For a lot of courses, thinking about how the content should work and it all fit together, it's not rocket science to do the HTML. Breaking the learning down properly into components is interesting, but you're trained educators, right?

My advice? Get the CS department to lay you out a template that you can drop content into and do simple, JavaScript testing. That's not complicated, it's all that's required and will make a nice project for a student.

This is assuming a reasonably small scope, though. If you're ultimately looking at moving this to a larger managed learning environment (which isn't necessarily appropriate) then you'll be better off pumping out stuff which is AICC (http://www.aicc.org/) and / or SCORM (http://www.adlnet.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=scorma bt&cfid=286743&cftoken=76681359) compliant. For this, you want to use pro tools. A managed learning environment working with non-standards based courses isn't a problem (I write such beasts day in day out) but it does complicate matters. I suppose a student could do this as a project again but, erm, I wouldn't recommend it, having read the standards :-)

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[quintessent]

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