Computer programming training

In the past, only businesses with deep pockets could afford computer-based training (CBT), and often only for programs which were guaranteed a long life with little demand for revision. Market pressures to increase training productivity at reduced cost have pushed many businesses to take a fresh look at traditional training programs.

New authoring languages have extended object-oriented programming concepts to give instructional system authors more immediate control of the development process. These new object-oriented tools provide productivity and cost savings that promise to extend CBT into many areas. In the beginning, object-oriented programming was barely one step ahead of coded programming developers simply collapsed some code around an icon. The objects were not independent and the structure created still had to be processed like any other code.

Even today, all icon-based authoring languages are not equal. The more sophisticated authoring tools have built-in course logic that provides instructional designers with easy methods to meet training design objectives. They feature powerful tools that provide complete and immediate control of the programming environment with dynamic course mapping; windowing of authoring levels; the ability to run portions or all of the program during an authoring session; and, direct editing of a running version when in authoring mode.

Using dynamic course mapping, authors can always see the overall instructional system they're creating, as well as any of its components. In fact programs are created by building the course map. Authoring levels can be arranged in windows so that the author can nest complex interactions within other interactions and see a map of more than one sequence at once.

Since authors can make changes from either the design window or the presentation window, any sequence can be edited while it's being created. An entire learning system or any individual sequence can be played back at any time.

With object-oriented programming, authoring consists of mapping a structure then running the course to fill in the content screens. Within a few seconds, authors can create structures that would require many lines of code and hours of programming. Entire courses can be created in a matter of days, or weeks, with continuous revision and testing during the development process.

With code-based programs, on the other hand, development involves more steps, is much slower and can't be integrated with testing or revision. Before a code-based program can be run, all the code has to be completed, compiled, linked and run before authors can actually review what they've created. Any changes in the learning structure have to be made to the code itself and the compiling-linking process has to be repeated.

While object-oriented programming has done little to reduce the considerable hardware investment required for CBT, the nature of this type of programming makes it more cost effective to create sophisticated and interesting courseware.