The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group KNOWHOW Interactive Training Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au

At one time, I sat through rather a lot of computer-based training courses, and found many of them very inflexible. If I was already familiar with a topic, bad luck! If some topics were irrelevant to my needs, tough cheese! I had to do each topic regardless. So, it was a delightful feeling to discover a range of self-paced PC-based training solutions that users can tailor exactly to their own requirements. Sydney-based multimedia training developer, KNOWHOW Solutions, offers over 40 titles in up to four languages, ranging from various versions of Windows and DOS through to Microsoft, Corel and Lotus office products and Netscape Navigator. I reviewed Outlook '97, which follows a consistent format to the rest of the titles in the series.

Training

KNOWHOW offers highly individualised training, where you can tailor each course to your own needs, and progress through courses in whichever way suits you best. The default method is to choose a chapter at a time from a menu. Each chapter starts off with some Objectives, continues with the tutorial, then finishes up with a Summary and a multiple choice Quiz. You can review any topic once you've completed the Quiz, but you can also backtrack at any point during the tutorial or afterwards. If you feel that you already meet the chapter objectives, you can skip the tutorial and go straight to the Summary or Quiz screens. You can do chapters in any order you like.

Alternatively, you can use the Skills Navigator to assess your current knowledge and focus on your weaknesses. The Navigator begins by asking you 50 random questions, then presents a list of topics for your review, with your strengths and weaknesses indicated in green and red respectively. When you're confident that you've brought your weak areas up to scratch, you can take a Final Test, which also comprises 50 random questions. You can switch to the Skills Navigator at any time, even if you started off your training using the chapter menu.

The training screens replicate the application you're learning, overlaying it with an instruction window and red or green arrows where necessary. Most of the screens are interactive, and you move to the next screen either by clicking the Next button or performing a task. If you make three consecutive mistakes or your keyboard is inactive for a pre-determined period of time, a Demonstration button replaces the Next button, which when clicked, shows you what to do.

Each training title includes a Glossary and an Index. The Glossary explains general computer jargon as well as any technical terms used in the tutorials. Within the tutorial itself, you can click on any highlighted terms to display their definition. A Workbook facility enables you to print a personal reference book from selected topics; however, I couldn't work out how to activate this feature.

Based upon my review of Outlook '97, the only pre-requisite knowledge you need to undertake a KNOWHOW course is the ability to turn your computer on and start up the tutorial. If Outlook is any indication, the rest of the training titles also cover rudimentary computer essentials such as minimising windows, dragging and dropping files and so on. You can easily skip these sections, though.

KnowledgeBank

The heart of the KNOWHOW series is the KnowledgeBank, an administrative utility which runs in the background controlling access, grouping titles under a common interface, and tracking user progress. It also produces a range of reports, such as Certificates, Test Results and User Summaries. If you need to charge for training, KnowledgeBank offers a billing report, with which you can choose to bill users or their departments on an hourly or user basis.

Each installed title in the KNOWHOW series is automatically linked to the KnowledgeBank, and you can also add third-party products to the course selection menus. All titles are accessible over networks and administrators can organise training data by branches and departments as well as individual user. When installed over a network, a utility called Chameleon automatically adapts the training interface to the capabilities of the local machine. On base-level machines it offers a text-based interface, while on multimedia machines, it actives the audio and visual features - although users may switch these off if they prefer.

Assessment

I looked only at Outlook '97, but if the other KNOWHOW titles are of comparable quality, I'd highly recommend them if you're in the market for self-paced PC-based training solutions. The realistic, simulated screens, and the interactive nature of most of them will help you quickly to become familiar with the real application. You can skip topics you're already comfortable with, focus on your weak areas and move freely back and forth within the tutorial at your own pace. At the organisational level, KnowledgeBank is a useful utility for monitoring training at the coal face, and Chameleon's seamless ability to optimise the tutorial interface to hardware capabilities will be a boon to network administrators.

Reprinted from the May 1998 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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