CBT Experience

Perhaps more than any other, it is the world of computer-based training (CBT) that has best seized upon the opportunities offered by multimedia. Just ask Robert Blalock, director of Technologies Research for the World Tutor Group (Fort Worth, TX).

World Tutor Group has an interesting heritage. It is the multimedia training arm of AMR Training Group. AMR, in turn, owns American Airlines. It was at the airline that the Group got its start. Faced with a mandate to train 30 percent more employees each year at no additional cost, WTG turned to C BT for relief. That was six years ago, when the state of the art for multimedia development was primitive compared to the software you can use today.

T he development tool WTG used in 1990 was based on a C-like programming language. Creating materials with it, Blalock explains, required not only a specialist who knew the material to teach, but a programmer as well. So WTG set about finding software that could leverage the knowledge of its specialists in a way that empowered them to design some of the training products themselves.

WTG chose Macromedia's Authorware, one of several high-end tools for developing computer-based presentations that mix and match all types of media sources. Tools like Authorware and Asymetrix's Multimedia Toolbook make it possible to design screens that present text or graphics and let you add the punch of synchronized sound, animation, and video.