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An Introduction to
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If you are not familiar with Computer-based Training (or Technology-based Training as it is sometimes known), this document will help you to grasp the basic concepts. It will also highlight some of the ways in which your organisation can benefit from the biggest revolution in training since the introduction of chalk in the classroom.
You may also find this document helpful if you simply want an update on current CBT technology - which seems to change almost by the minute. We have for example, included a broad specification for a multimedia PC, and touched on some of the rationale behind hardware selection.
This document concentrates on the CBT environment that has become the de facto standard for organisations throughout the world - the Microsoft Windows platform.
There are CBT systems for the Apple Macintosh, Unix and many other hardware and software platforms but we have not covered them here. It would broaden the subject too much, particularly for an introduction.
Also, we have not addressed Web-based or intranet-based training. These are still specialist areas that require a lot of careful planning and technical know-how. If you want to know about Web-based or intranet-based training, please contact us directly.
While we at CBT Solutions obviously have a vested interest in the CBT market, we have tried to make this document as impartial as possible. The observations made and advice offered can be applied to any CBT system.
If you want help or advice on the latest CBT and multimedia developments, or if you want to exchange war stories (we are always willing to learn from other people's experience), or if you simply disagree with something we have said here, please contact us directly - we always appreciate your help and feedback.
This is quite a long document - you may find it easier to print rather than read it on-line.
Hint: You can save paper if you change your view text size to its smallest setting before printing.
On IE5 choose the View menu, Text Size, Smallest.
Computer-based Training is best known as a medium for presenting training directly in the workplace, using personal computers. There are many other applications of CBT as we will see later, but this general description will do as a starting point.
A common misconception is that CBT is only used to train people in the use of computers - it is not. Quite the reverse, CBT means using computers to train people.
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"Computer-based Training is about using computers to help train people. It is not necessarily about training people to use computers." |
The subject matter of a CBT course can be anything that can be communicated using the wide range of text, graphics, colour, sound, animation, video and questioning techniques that a good CBT system will provide.
A fundamental aim of CBT is to present the training material to students in the most attractive, effective and direct manner. Well-designed CBT will maximise the benefits that distance and open learning techniques can bring to your students.
On the face of it, a CBT system is rather like a super-duper slide-show or presentation system. You put information on the screen, the student clicks on a button and the display moves on. The thing that really sets CBT apart from the many PC presentation systems is the ability to ask questions - and to react, sometimes in very subtle ways, to the answers that are received. There are almost as many ways to ask a question as there are questions, and there are often as many answers as there are students.
Let's take one simple example and see what can happen. You want to ask "Who was the Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1980?" The answer you are looking for is Margaret Thatcher. Seems simple enough but what happens if the student responds with Lady Thatcher, or Mrs Thatcher or Mrs M Thatcher, or any of the other possibilities that now seem obvious? What should happen if the student gives the right answer but doesn't spell it correctly? Add to this the complexity of awarding scores and offering the correct level of remedial action, and you can start to see why CBT has to be much more than just a whizz-bang presentation system.
Our world, especially the business world, is becoming smaller, faster and more competitive. Rapidly increasing volumes of information must be transferred and processed if an organisation is to retain its competitive edge. Computers and machines can help but it still comes down to one simple question "How good are the people at their jobs?".
We all recognise that there is a direct connection between the success of an organisation and the effectiveness of its workforce. For example, take two organisations for whom everything is equal, except that one has a more highly trained and well-informed workforce. Now pit them against each other in a competitive marketplace. Which would come out on top? Ok, it's obvious but it's also amazing how often this gets overlooked. Training makes the difference!
Forward-looking, successful organisations will always have a pressing need to upgrade the skills and performance of their personnel. Good training is a fundamental building block of successful organisations - but traditional training methods are expensive and it is notoriously difficult to measure quality and demonstrate an actual cost-benefit. This is where CBT can help.
Most organisations find that when they add CBT to their training armoury they can significantly reduce training costs without sacrificing quality, or alternatively, they can increase quality without additional cost. In fact they can often do both - increase quality and save money. Measuring the real cost-benefit becomes easier too. Isn't that worth having?
If you use a PC, have you already used a tutorial that was included with a popular word processor or spreadsheet program? If so, ask yourself whether it was effective, or whether you would rather have attended a two-day training course in another town to gain the same knowledge. Wasn't it more convenient to work at your own pace in familiar surroundings?
Do any of the following points apply to your organisation?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should seriously consider using CBT as part of your training programme. The initial cost of implementing CBT should be handsomely repaid.
Most prospective CBT users want to know "What specifically are the benefits and savings I can expect?". The answer, as usual, is not straightforward. So much depends on how an organisation can adapt itself to new technology and the imagination with which CBT can be deployed. But here are some points to ponder.
Many organisations do not really know how much their current training costs. For example, traditional training methods such as classroom 'chalk and talk' sessions involve not only obvious costs such as employing tutors, but also a great variety of hidden costs. There are substitution costs for replacing personnel who are away from the workplace, disruption to normal working practice (which is inevitable when key personnel are away on a course), travel and subsistence costs for attendance at central training locations, and so on.
CBT can eliminate a lot of these costs, particularly if it is used in the form of distance learning when students learn directly in the workplace, in self-study mode with a minimum of supervision.
Most of the expenditure associated with CBT courses is incurred during initial development. With traditional methods you not only have similar course development costs but also the continuing costs throughout the life of the course. This can include the cost of providing qualified trainers, the training facilities and accommodation for trainers and students.
Development of CBT courses does not need to be expensive. It is possible to produce effective CBT packages that keep the use of expensive elements such as video, animation and sophisticated graphics to an acceptable level, whilst still giving the student an easy to follow, visually stimulating, and effective training session.
Computer based training works. Compared with traditional techniques, it can bring many additional benefits to your organisation, your training department and your students. For example:
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"Compared with traditional classroom training methods, students using Computer-based Training absorb similar material 30% faster and retain 30% more of the information they are taught." |
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Another benefit of CBT which is often overlooked is that by replacing the more mundane, repetitive training tasks with CBT, you can usually release your 'live' trainers to concentrate on higher-value activities such as workshops that develop your students' advanced skill levels. Here is a real-life example.
One of our customers ran a five-day course at a central education facility. Despite sending out orientation packs well before the course, the students usually arrived ill-prepared. The first two days of the course were always spent bringing the students up to the same level of knowledge.
We prepared a CBT course that was sent out in place of the orientation packs to all prospective students. Before a student's place on the course was confirmed, they had to submit a certificate printed by the CBT course. The certificate proved that the student had completed the preparatory work successfully. As a direct result, the main course was cut from five days to three days.
Once created, a CBT course can be maintained quickly and simply. Modifications and enhancements can be distributed world-wide by email, electronic file transfer across a network, through the Internet, corporate intranet, local area network, or simply by diskette or CD-ROM.
If you choose to use a course management database, you can control and track student progress. In particular, it should reveal any shortfalls - not only in student performance but also in the CBT course material itself.
If you want to improve the way you measure how effective your overall training is, how about sending out CBT quizzes on a regular basis? Make them fun to do and provide a sufficient incentive to ensure they are completed - carrot or stick, that's up to you. When you analyse the data the quizzes return, you will be able to see at a glance which areas of training are working and more importantly, which are not.
Yes, the same thing could also be achieved with paper-based methods - but the advantage of CBT is that it can be automated. Data can be collected, collated and reported on with a minimum of human intervention and cost.
CBT provides many important benefits over traditional classroom methods. These include:
In the early days of CBT, the only way to produce your course material was to program it from the ground up, in whatever programming language that was available on your chosen hardware platform. This technique is still used today, but it's expensive and is usually only employed in highly specialised applications such as simulators.
Once the idea of CBT caught on, it wasn't long before specialised authoring languages began to appear (for authoring read programming). These offered significant savings in terms of production times but were still basically programming aids. Again, some are still in use today but they usually require the services of a specialised department composed of course designers, conscripted subject experts and authors who are more likely to be computer programmers than trainers.
This brings us to today's technology - authoring systems. In much the same way as you would buy a word processing package or a spreadsheet program for your PC, you can buy an authoring system.
Authoring systems give you the tools to create your own CBT materials quickly and simply. While a background in training or graphic design certainly helps, all you really need is the subject knowledge and a common-sense approach to communicating your ideas. And, unless you are interested in exploiting the latest developments in sound and video, you and your students probably don't need any special hardware.
Until the advent of specialised authoring systems - as opposed to hand-cranked code production techniques - the production of CBT was an expensive investment that could only be justified in certain well-defined situations. Now you can reap the benefits of CBT easily, and without a major investment in people and resources.
Most PCs are now equipped with a compact disk (CD) player. CDs are currently the most popular media for transporting CBT courses to the students. You can pack a lot of data onto a CD - around 650 MB. That is certainly enough for complex animations and even for lengthy near-video quality moving pictures. Bear in mind though that your organisation may still have a significant investment in older systems that do not have CDs installed as standard.
Another popular method of distributing CBT to student is by electronic file transfer. This normally requires broadband, a modem or a direct network connection.
Most CBT courses can be presented on 'standard' business or home PCs even if the courses contain sound or video sequences.
If the course is to include sound, you might consider equipping the presentation and authoring systems with headphones. You might even need to provide a microphone.
There are quite a few options for using video. You can for example, store and replay video sequences directly from a CD or the PC's hard disk. The options range from software-only solutions to highly specialised add-on boards that you fit into the PC.
The efficiency of courseware production is usually reckoned in terms of a ratio between development time (authoring and testing) and run time (how long the average student takes to complete the course).
As a rule of thumb, with a good authoring system, an experienced author and a straightforward subject, you can expect to achieve a ratio as low as 10:1 or better. That is, it will take you 10 hours to develop 1 hour's worth of course material. This can rise to 100:1 or more if the subject is particularly complex or needs say, lots of animations. Bear in mind that a good library of graphic images, sounds and animations can save you a great deal of time.
If you are unfortunate enough to have selected an inferior authoring system (yes, there are some around) or if you are using a programming or authoring language, you may find that your production ratio will start at 100:1 and is more likely to be 500:1.
There are many ways that you can create CBT, including programming the PC from the ground up, using an authoring language (slightly better than programming), or by using a purpose-designed authoring system.
A CBT system usually comprises four main elements you need to think about - two of software and two of hardware.
The two software elements are the authoring system for developing the course material (creating the screens that the student will see), and the presentation or delivery system that is used to present the screens to the students and to collect the results.
The hardware elements are the two types of PC systems that are used to run the authoring or presentation programs. They are split into two categories because they tend to have different specifications - the authoring system normally needs to be a more powerful machine than that used by the students. Both systems may also need to be fitted with specialised equipment for say, sound production or creating video sequences.
You use the authoring software rather like a sophisticated word processor. It usually provides everything necessary to generate your course material. It should have sufficient tools to enable you to create simple text and graphic displays. If you need specialised graphics, or say sound and video editing facilities, the authoring system should have an interface that allows the material to be prepared externally, using specialised tools such as animation programs, and then imported into the CBT material.
An important element of any course is deciding how the user should interact with the material being presented. The authoring system should have ample tools for asking questions and making decisions based on the answers received.
There are many different ways of asking questions, from simple Yes/No choices to Ordered Multiple-completion Lists where you want the student to identify, in the correct order, a sequence of elements from a long list. Or you might want the student to key in a free-form sentence and have the system allow for spelling errors whilst checking that the sentence contains certain key words.
Having obtained a response from the student you may want to award points based on the 'correctness' of the answer rather than a simple 'right or wrong'. The authoring system must be capable of all these interactions and decisions. It is this ability that is really at the heart of the CBT system.
Once you have developed your screens, the authoring system will allow you to specify the order in which they will be presented, and what the system should do as a result of each interaction. This is usually called scripting.
Some authoring systems force you to specify the 'navigational' information within each screen. A better way is to divorce the two and have the flow of the course determined by a separate script. This means that you can use the same screen more than once without having to duplicate it and worry about how to maintain all the extra copies.
The last step in course development is to generate the media that will contain the course material and decide how to distribute this and the presentation system to your students.
A good presentation system will record statistics about a student's performance and responses, and will return the results so that they can be analysed centrally. The best presentation systems can collect the performance data into a database, in real-time across a local-area network, a wide-area network, the Internet or an intranet.
There are two main reasons for collecting statistical data; the first is an obvious requirement for measuring the student's progress but the second, which is not so obvious, is that you may need to analyse the effectiveness of the training material itself. For example, if ninety per cent of your students answer a particular question incorrectly, either the question is not being posed in the right way or the training material that precedes it is deficient. In any case, the course developers need to be alerted so that they can make the appropriate amendments.
Another good question to which there is no simple answer. It really depends on your expectations and your perceived requirements (or hard-won experience). However, here are some questions to prompt you:
One final point. Insist on evaluating any system that passes the theoretical tests outlined above. At the end of the evaluation run through these points again and see if the system still measures up. Take enough time to make sure that the system will work the way that you want it to and that you are comfortable with it before you make the decision to purchase.
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CBT Solutions Ltd.
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