After selecting courses for theACS Business Skills On-Line Pilot Program, I thought I should start. But how do I start a course?
The online system has a list of the courses I selected. When I click on the first I see a brief description, a title "Lesson Objectives" (with nothing under it), a Course Overview, two "Job Aids", "Skill Briefs". There are links from the aids and briefs. But I don't see a link to the actual course content.
There was an icon for "download", which brought up a pop-up window saying "You must install the SkillSoft Course Manager before downloading course content. Click OK if you would like to start this installation.". When I clicked on that it opened a further window telling me to print out the instructions before installing the "SkillSoft Course Manager" (whatever that is).When I then started the download, my browser crashed.
The instructions provided were somewhat confusing, saying the SkillSoft Course Manager was optional. But I could not find any way into the course, apart from downloading it. There is mention of being able to "play" courses on the web server while connected to the network, which seems to suggest the courses are in the form of video (or something else playable). There is then mention of security, licences, proxies, Windows Vista / Internet Explorer 7.0 protected mode.
At this point I have got as far as I can without asking for assistance. Normally I would send a mail message or enter one in the online help forum. But there was a live help chat window offered, so I thought I would try that. It displayed Please wait, you are next in line." so I started my stopwatch and waited. After about a minute I got a text message to say the helper was retrieving my details and under that a Flash window. I then had a text box to type into. The helper told me to click on the "play the course" link. It turned out this was a triangle on the screen with the ALT text label of "Launch Course ...".
Unfortunately clicking the course launch button crashed my browser. I was then asked to do a browser test, which also crashed the browser. I was then taken through checking the configuration of the browser. Then I was asked to delete all the Java temporary files. After 22 minutes we were still working our way through the process. It got complicated when I had to open the Java console and make some entries for SkillSoft.
When I tried to play the course it again crashed the browser. Impressively I was able to reconnect to the online chat and the help person was waiting for me. They suggested I reinstall Java, but as the application requires JRE 1.6.0_21 and I already have JRE 1.6.0_24, that should not be a problem. By now it was 35 minutes since asking for help and I was thinking it might have been better to send a message.
At the last minute it occurred to me to ask if it made a difference that I was running Linux. The helper advised that Linux was not guaranteed to work. Given I had spend more than thirty minutes trying to get the course to play and it was not guaranteed to work anyway, I decided it was time to abandon the attempt.
Showing posts with label ACS Business Skills On-Line Pilot Program. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ACS Business Skills On-Line Pilot Program. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
ACS Business Skills Third Access
After seeing I could navigate the ACS Business Skills On-Line Pilot Program, I thought I should select some courses. One annoyance I have found is the log-on screen has an option for accessibility, but I have to click this each time I enter the site, the option does not appeared to be remembered in my learner profile.
Last time I got as far as finding there was noting in "My Plan", which I need to populate by selecting some courses. What is confusing is that I do not appear to be able to add courses from "My Plan" but have to instead navigate my way to the catalogue.
At the catalogue I was confronted with "Your current selection is My Assignment". It is always worrying for any student to be told that they have an assignment to do. My "Reflections of an Online Student" describes the worry caused by not knowing what I had to do in the last online course I tried. In this case I can't work out what "My Assignment" is, as when I click on it, nothing seems to happen.
Further down on the same screen I am offered: 1 Hour Courseware, Business Skills Curricula, IT Professional Curricula and Business Exploration Series. These appear to be selections of courses (with then sub-folders and sub-sub-folders with further categories of courses).
Judging by the first branch of this tree, there appear to be about 60 courses in total offered for the pilot. The problem with this is that there is too much choice and not enough information on which to make a decision. This contrasts with the UK's Open University, which provides fuller descriptions for its courses.
Also the descriptions do not appear to be accurate, as an example I selected "Emotional Intelligence Essentials" from the 1 Hour Course-ware, but found it was made up of two modules, each of one hour, making it a total of two hours (not one).
I clicked to add the course to my plan and was asked for a "Goal". At this point my goal was to add the course to my plan, but I assume this was intended to be a description of what I wanted from the course. But like any student, what I want to do is complete the course and at least pass. There was also a "due date" set to tomorrow (which seems reasonable for a two hour course). There is an option to send me a reminder, which I assume this is in the absence of a human tutor to remind me to do my work.
Then I added a second course on "soft skills", which also had the default completion date of tomorrow. This seems less reasonable, as it assumes I am going to do three hours of courses in one day.
I added several more courses. It is not clear to me what happens next. Am I promoted to start the courses? Is there some sort of introduction to how to do such courses first?
Last time I got as far as finding there was noting in "My Plan", which I need to populate by selecting some courses. What is confusing is that I do not appear to be able to add courses from "My Plan" but have to instead navigate my way to the catalogue.
At the catalogue I was confronted with "Your current selection is My Assignment". It is always worrying for any student to be told that they have an assignment to do. My "Reflections of an Online Student" describes the worry caused by not knowing what I had to do in the last online course I tried. In this case I can't work out what "My Assignment" is, as when I click on it, nothing seems to happen.
Further down on the same screen I am offered: 1 Hour Courseware, Business Skills Curricula, IT Professional Curricula and Business Exploration Series. These appear to be selections of courses (with then sub-folders and sub-sub-folders with further categories of courses).
Judging by the first branch of this tree, there appear to be about 60 courses in total offered for the pilot. The problem with this is that there is too much choice and not enough information on which to make a decision. This contrasts with the UK's Open University, which provides fuller descriptions for its courses.
Also the descriptions do not appear to be accurate, as an example I selected "Emotional Intelligence Essentials" from the 1 Hour Course-ware, but found it was made up of two modules, each of one hour, making it a total of two hours (not one).
I clicked to add the course to my plan and was asked for a "Goal". At this point my goal was to add the course to my plan, but I assume this was intended to be a description of what I wanted from the course. But like any student, what I want to do is complete the course and at least pass. There was also a "due date" set to tomorrow (which seems reasonable for a two hour course). There is an option to send me a reminder, which I assume this is in the absence of a human tutor to remind me to do my work.
Then I added a second course on "soft skills", which also had the default completion date of tomorrow. This seems less reasonable, as it assumes I am going to do three hours of courses in one day.
I added several more courses. It is not clear to me what happens next. Am I promoted to start the courses? Is there some sort of introduction to how to do such courses first?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
ACS Business Skills Second Access
After making sure I could access the ACS Business Skills On-Line Pilot Program, I thought I should select some courses. Like any student the first thing I did was click on the first link on the web site "My Plan".
The welcome email message had an attachment ("Tips for E-learning"), but this was in hard to read PDF format so I had ignored it (as the average student would). But I went back and read it. It was difficult to get the document as when I click on the link in the message, it appears nothing happens, as the PDF downloads in the background (this document should be in the body of the message or on the web site, not an attachment). The tips were disappointing, being one A4 page, with thinks like "Make time for e-Learning".
So I went back to "My Plan" and found it said " You currently have no items in your plan.". It might be a god idea to provide an introductory course to get the students used to the system and provide help in setting up a plan. There was a link for help, so I pressed it and ended up in "SkillPort" (which I assume isn the name for the e-learning system), in another window, with a familiar looking help interface format. But these seemed to be instructions on how to work the interface, not help me select courses.
But that is all the time I have for the moment.
The welcome email message had an attachment ("Tips for E-learning"), but this was in hard to read PDF format so I had ignored it (as the average student would). But I went back and read it. It was difficult to get the document as when I click on the link in the message, it appears nothing happens, as the PDF downloads in the background (this document should be in the body of the message or on the web site, not an attachment). The tips were disappointing, being one A4 page, with thinks like "Make time for e-Learning".
So I went back to "My Plan" and found it said " You currently have no items in your plan.". It might be a god idea to provide an introductory course to get the students used to the system and provide help in setting up a plan. There was a link for help, so I pressed it and ended up in "SkillPort" (which I assume isn the name for the e-learning system), in another window, with a familiar looking help interface format. But these seemed to be instructions on how to work the interface, not help me select courses.
But that is all the time I have for the moment.
Monday, April 18, 2011
ACS Business Skills First Access
A few days after the Austrlaian Computer Society told me I was selected as one of the initial students for the pilot is running an ACS Business Skills On-Line Pilot Program. I received an email message with the user-id and password. It was a slight inconvenience that my ACS id and password were not used for course access (perhaps this will be fixed after the trial).
The initial log-on screen had a friendly introduction and an interesting box to tick for "Enable Web Accessibility" (which I ticked as I am interested in web accessibility ). I entered the given id and password, was prompted to change the password and was then in the training system.
I was worried the interface would be in Flash, but I was presented with a readable text based interface (with a few images) and three main options: "My Plan", "My Progress" and Catalogue. At that point I was called away to dinner (as is usual for part time students).
The initial log-on screen had a friendly introduction and an interesting box to tick for "Enable Web Accessibility" (which I ticked as I am interested in web accessibility ). I entered the given id and password, was prompted to change the password and was then in the training system.
I was worried the interface would be in Flash, but I was presented with a readable text based interface (with a few images) and three main options: "My Plan", "My Progress" and Catalogue. At that point I was called away to dinner (as is usual for part time students).
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