Technical notes

Technical requirements

The Reeltime College software will run on just about any multi-media Windows PC, including Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and XP. The software is very compact (less than 1 Mb) and isn't power-hungry. Any current PCs will handle video quite comfortably.

The screen movies (lesson previews) are handled by either by Lotus ScreenCam or Camtasia with TSS codec. The codec and the ScreenCam player are shipped with the software and installed automatically. (It is installed with the Reeltime components and won't affect any existing ScreenCam installation.)

ScreenCam and Camtasia allow very high quality screen movies for a sensible file size - so we are able to get hours on run time onto a single CD-ROM.

The hands-on interactive components are handled by the software. This co-ordinates the lesson activities and monitors what is happening with the target software. Again, this doesn't impose a significant overhead. The PC should be able to play audio (WAV) files at the same time as running the target software. Realistically, if the PC can run the target (Access, PowerPoint etc.) at a reasonable speed, then it will have no trouble running the course at the same time.

We've tested courses on a relatively lowly Pentium 120 MHz laptop with 24 Mb RAM. It works, but doesn't exactly set records for speed.

Streaming

We're not using streaming technology to deliver media files over the web for several reasons:

• The media is non-volatile (unlike, say, a news broadcast) so does not need to be streamed to be up-to-date - and any delay while you wait for your CD is more than compensated for by the other benefits.
• More importantly, although a wholly web-delivered system would be fine for high-speed connections (such as you may have where you work) you would be restricted to where you study. Our research shows that an increasing number of people want to continue studying out of the office - at home for eample - where they don't have high-speed connections. With Reeltime you can study wherever you have access to the internet - regardless of the speed of the connection.
• Streamed files can't (yet) cope with the complex interactions which a College course makes to organise the media with the student's actions.

Learning theory

The Reeltime College uses a system of progressive immersion, to help students master the subject as easily as possible. This isn't a new system; it is based on training methods developed in the armed forces and it is based on a structured approach to learning. For each lesson there is a learning loop:

• Show what the lesson is about
• Show the lesson in detail
• Let the student do the task under guidance
• Let the student do the task alone

Most people find this a natural and easy way to learn. Above all, if students can actually do the lesson task, it's a very good indicator that the skills have been learned and will be available to the student outside the training session - which is where they are needed!

Simulations and transfer of training

One of the features of the Reeltime College approach is that we use interactions with the real software. If you want to learn about Word for example, the course will assume that you are running Word on your PC, at least for the hands-on components of the course. We don't use simulations.

We believe this is an essential part of the training process. Simulations are often good inside the training session - but tend to be less effective in helping students to transfer skills from the training session into the real world. Working with the real software greatly improves transfer.

Of course you can just do the video/movie components of a lesson if you don't want the full hands-on experience - or if you just want to dip back into a lesson for a refresher.

NEXT: Questions about Reeltime College