Notice the new small menu line. Oh no! The screen turned dark and there's no place to type! Don't worry! Keep reading." That's part of one of the mini-exercises in the materials available from Texas-based Cornerstone Solutions Inc., the subject of this month's courseware review.

This type of humor is just one of the things that distinguishes Cornerstone's instructor-led computer training materials from many others I've had the opportunity to review. From a learning perspective, it's things like this that help keep learners engaged in an activity, pique their curiosity, and make them want to try the next activity. It also helps them remember what they learned when they get back to their desks. Laughter and giggles are great memory joggers.

WHAT'S IN IT?

Humor is not the only interesting feature of this training material. In addition to the Student User Guide, Cornerstone Solutions (CS) supplies a laminated "cheat sheet" that learners can use as a job aid during and after class, with condensed information about all the topics covered in the class. For example, I looked at the Word for Windows Introduction materials, and among other things on the cheat sheet, there is a list of all the shortcut keys mentioned throughout the Student User Guide. There are also some step-by-step procedures for things like saving and opening documents and printing them.

CS also provides a keyboard template with helpful reminders of keyboard short cuts as well as the function of all the F key combinations used in Word, not just those used in the class. These keyboard templates are only available with the Introductory level course materials although they apply to other levels of the same course as well. These templates are also a job aid that can help learners perform better back at the desk, possibly eliminating some support calls.

The Student User Guide uses an easy-to-understand format. The material is broken up into sections and topics. Each section starts with a statement of what learners will do in that section. The only comment I would make here is that these statements are not what I would call objectives. They reference what learners will do, not what they will learn. I'd rather see the statement read more like this: "At the end of this section you will be able to identify and describe the elements of the Word for Windows Main Screen." The current statement is: "To become familiar with the basic concepts that every Word for Windows user should know, you will view the elements of the Word for Windows screen."

Learning-based objectives help learners determine what it is they are supposed to be able to do as a result of viewing the Word for Windows screen. Just telling them they will view it is not enough of a focus for adult learners who are more interested in what they will learn, not how they will learn it.

Each topic has a description that helps focus the learner's attention on what the topic is about and what they are going to learn. The descriptions are easy to read and somewhat entertaining. CS sees these descriptions as a way to supply learners with the information that would normally be found in the manufacturer's user manual (which are probably not available in class or back at the learner's desk). Graphics of buttons, menus, screen features, and such are also included in the descriptions. These features are more than just screen captures, they are actually manipulated to show the feature or option being referred to in the related description.

The Student User Guide also includes numbered, step-by-step procedures, that are separate from the descriptions and exercises. These procedures include comments that describe what is happening during each step or contain brief explanations of options available with each step. The exercises, called mini-exercises, are found at the end of each topic in a section. They have the familiar columnar format found in most instructor-led materials that I've seen. The format includes the step number, what action the learner is to take, and how to perform that action; and they are intended to be done by the instructor and learner at the same time.

CS has helped make the mini-exercises easier to read by shading every other step. This helps keep the learner's eye trained on the current step and prevents them from getting lost in the steps when they look away from the material to the screen and back. There are lots of mini-exercises, too. In the section on editing a Word document, there are 17 mini-exercises.

There is a review exercise at the end of each section that allows the user to apply what was learned in the section. These exercises don't include the specific keystroke prompts found in the mini-exercise's "how to" section. Instead they include a list of tasks and comments that are humorous-like "Don't you love that 18th Century spelling?" for a task related to spell checking the U.S. Constitution-or helpful-like "Be sure that instances where 'United States' already is followed by 'of America' are not replaced," for a search and replace task.

An exercise diskette is included with each Student User Guide that includes the files for the review exercises. The files can be copied to another drive or used directly from the diskette. There is also a little utility that can be used to refresh the diskette or copied files. CS has made each review exercise completely independent of other exercises to help in resequencing material if necessary.

Throughout the Student User Guide, CS has indicated where, in addition to the method specified in the procedure or mini-exercise, short-cut keys or right mouse clicks can be used to accomplish the same thing. This is helpful to the student as they can learn alternatives that are sometimes quicker to use, making them more productive back at the desk. CS has also included what it calls "Helpful Notations." These are comments related to something in the description, procedure, or mini-exercise. Here's one example: "Don't worry if the line endings on your screen don't match the line endings in the letter above. In fact, it is rather unlikely that they will. It doesn't matter; relax, mellow out, all's right with the world. There . . . feel better now?" Or "The menu bar at the top of Print Preview is also for the document. If you select File, Exit, you will not only exit Print Preview, but also exit Word! " Each of these features has its own associated graphic making its identification and function easy to spot and quick to use.

A Skills Evaluation is available at the end of each Student User Guide, It asks whether the learner has taken the prerequisite course(s) and what experience the learner has had with the software prior to the course. It then asks them to rate their confidence in performing tasks that were covered in the course. They can rate themselves as lost, a little shaky, OK, or really good, as well as indicate if a topic wasn't covered. This helps learners do a mental review of the course as a whole, and think back on their performance of a particular task. In addition to providing a way to collect course feedback, I think this evaluation has a side benefit by providing another way to help learners assimilate and internalize what they learned. It gives them a structured process in which to mentally rehearse a task while evaluating their own ability to perform the task.

An instructor rating is also part of the skills evaluation. It allows learners to rate the instructor as to knowledge, teaching ability, effective use of materials, attentiveness, ability to answer questions, and the ability to encourage interest in the subject. The instructor rating scale starts at Poor and goes to Great, with OK as the middle rating.

There is also an available Table of Contents and an Index in the Student User Guide to make it easier to locate information. These two features are detailed and complete and make looking things up after class easy. However, I did have a small problem reading the index. CS used all the same font for the items and page numbers and this made it harder to distinguish the two. I had to make a mental stop to separate the two pieces of information.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Cornerstone Solutions Inc.'s materials represent a wonderful attempt at trying to take what is usually dull, boring, keystroke-oriented training materials and making them fun, useful, and something that helps learners learn. Although I'd like to see a more situational-based approach used in many instructor-led materials to make the transfer of learning from the classroom to the workplace more of a hit than a miss, CS has applied a lot of well though-out tricks to their keystroke approach to help the transfer process. The humor helps learners remember what they have learned and the job aids help learners use the software more effectively when back in their work place.

I also think that Cornerstone Solutions' materials can be effectively used by all levels of instructors. With all the information available in the student materials, even a novice instructor can be successful with these materials. The material is well laid out and will require little preparation time from instructor.

There are still some leaps that will have to be made, like making sure that users refer to and use the cheat sheet and keyboard template in class, as these materials aren't specifically mentioned in the instructions. However, with all the other features and options, any level of trainer will have fun and enjoy using these materials.

The students should have fun with these materials, too. As I said at the beginning of this review, laughter and giggles are good memory joggers.

Since there is no minimum purchase of Cornerstone Solutions' materials, call them, order the student manuals, and see for yourself. Test it out on a few learners and see what their feedback is. Anything that can help learners be more productive is worth a try.
SN

Dawn Adams is the president of consulting firm TechKnowledgy Inc. based in Kernersville, NC. She can be reached at 910-996-5290.