MultiMedia Magic - TOM (Training Online Manager)

TOM (Training Online Manager)

CBT Software for both Web and CD-ROM Delivery

Several other groups within Course Technology were also attempting to publish CBT products to augment their various textbook lines. But the Shelly Cashman "Learn By" Series was the only one that succeeded in reaching its functionality goals in both delivery environments: online and CD-ROM. As the expenses of multiple and somewhat redundant CBT projects began to climb without a sufficient ROI, upper management decided to combine them into one flexible product that would mesh with all of the textbook series. Our group was chosen to build this new product, code-named Amigo, that ultimately became TOM.

TOM presented many architectural challenges. These will be addressed in greater detail in the case study we will soon publish. Briefly, they included the following:

creating a navigation system that allowed for proper testing during intermediate stages of development by accurately reflecting which assets had and had not been completed
customizing the user interface for that navigation system to mimic the table of contents of whichever textbook the user had chosen
presenting essentially identical user experiences in both the executable and browser-based environments
saving user progress data whether or not the user had an active Internet connection
batch posting the records of offline progress to the online database
providing hooks for the SAM assessment product to use TOM for remediation
adhering to various business rules that forced us to code some of our own components instead of using existing ones for such common tasks as folder browsing and encryption

Automation proved to be a key factor by:

accelerating production of assets
increasing developer accuracy and consistency, thus minimizing QA cycles
providing consistently reliable updates to the navigation data as new assets were created
simplifying creation of navigation menu maps to reflect the organization of the various textbooks