• Background
• CLASS Project
• CLASS Staff
• General Insights
• Questions & Considerations
• Content
• Development Teams
• Content Acquisition
• Assessment & Grading
• Design
• Introduction
• Modeling
• Presentation
• Interactivity
• Navigation
• Assessments
• National Standards
• Quality Assurance
• Courses
• Features
• Courses
• Copyrights
• Technology
• Building a Course
• See and Say
• There are Limits!
• Influence and Change
• CLASS Courses
• Content
• Extras Designed
• Extras Linked
• Class Assessments
• A Bit of Dreamweaver
• Proofing
• Graphics
• MOUs
• Detailing Treatment
• Course Credits
• CLASS Style
• Publications

Technology and Change

The initial technology partner, Sarnoff Laboratories, Princeton, New Jersey, understood the concept. “Off-the-shelf” technology was not quite ready so they tried to build a database driven authoring system based on military tracking technology they had developed. CLASS™ cancelled their contract after 18 months do to a divergence of needs. Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET) picked up the development work but lacked the expertise.

Technology changes and evolving demand brought about products in the market that were viable products that CLASS™ could have moved to for development, but non were perfect fits. The ‘home-grown’ system development continued. Personnel changes and additions required more investigation and a learning curve which resulted in yet another group of coursed created in the home-grown system which was different than the home-grown system of the previous year, etc, etc.

Four years of development – four development system versions – four course presentations and admittedly non can be maintained in the architecture as it existed. At the end of four years, 48 courses were developed with various levels of sophistication. Fifteen courses were in development and none were in condition for the open market due to major handholding required for the technology.

In the beginning, course content was hard code programmed into a course. By year four, it was manipulated with desk-top web development software where it could be changed in real time in a course. This forced a strict control on ‘who is using which file when and for what purpose’ regiment.

The first 24 courses were much more on the elaborate side and were fairly unique. The second 24 courses were becoming more standardized in look and feel. They also had a file naming convention rather than whatever convention the individual programmer chose. The fourth year of development also brought about standardizing the programming languages and software used in creation of files, assets and content resources.

It is critical that content is accurate and appropriate for the intended audience. CLASS™ used several layers of review for course content and presentation. A critical issue is that the underlying functionality and architecture conform to specific detail – documented in a controlled environment. And, the technology must work!

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