multimedia

A friend recommended this book to me when I was beginning to write simple web-based training programs. In buying this book, I thought I would find a list of ways to put the training together. Horton's book brings a lot more to the reader.

First, this book does not give you code to use for building the training. Although he will mention the a helpful hint in using a particular code here and there, he does not give you long lists of things to cut and paste into your module.

This book provides you with a reference for all the things you, as the creator of the training, should be thinking about. It is not overwhelming with theory, but rather is a series of bulleted lists of tips, ideas, and suggestions for preparing your work. This is easy to read and has many examples (pictures) of what he is talking about (there is also a website and each chapter comes with a list of other places to go for information...not to mention the list of references in the back).

Horton explains what web-based training is and helps you to evaluate whether web-based training is the best route to go for your needs. He discusses how to market your training as well as how you can lay it out to make it user friendly. He has his own training programs that he does so all his methods have been tested. This lends a lot of credibility to the author.

Before reading this book, I was still thinking in terms of text and quizzes. Although he does mention these, he also gives you different ideas in how to present the information. This keeps training different and exciting.

I would highly recommend this book for any trainer, or educator, who is interested in pursuing, or experimenting, with web-based training.

I am a corporate trainer who seeks to convert much of his highly successful classroom-based training to the Web. This book was EXACTLY what I was looking for and met my very demanding criteria for a 'how-to' book.

It succeeds in that it:

1. Takes the reader step by step by step through all of the big-picture considerations (and several subtle but important nuances) one must undertake to create an e-learning program from scratch, or convert an existing training program to one that can work on the Web

2. Is written clearly, concisely and simply - - an absolute rarity in a world of technology handbooks that are muddled and/or require the reader to already have a Ph.D. in computer science to understand.

3. Introduced me to small and large ideas that I had not considered but that made perfectly common sense when I thought about them.

This book made me a disciple of William Horton, and gave me the confidence that if I wanted to, I could transform my classroom training to the Web yet avoid a lot of errors I would have committed had I not read this book.

This book contains a collection of web design tips which are in the main useful but not earth shattering. Where the book fell down, for me at least, was in the area of theory. It is weak here, and that can be a major problem if you want to conduct a scientific evaluation of the work using the umpteen heuristics suggested by the author. I doubt that there is enough information in the text to adequately help one frame an evaluation of a course, let alone put one together.

The book really has very little to say on instructional design methodologies. The reader is told to bear X, Y and Z in mind and then thrown a few sample scenarios (with screen shots). In many ways this is the tenor of the whole book: a vast and never ending list of do's and don'ts and qualifications to those do's and don'ts. I have to demure from the consensus among the other reviewers and adopt a minority position because quite frankly compared to other eleraning books, I found this one almost unreadable. The book is fullof particularities that are never adequately situated within a theoretical framework. It just seems like bad science to base so many recommendations on induction.

To be fair, it's good stuff in places, and frequently relevant, but can you retain it? Who wants to read a several hundred page long list of tips?

In terms of theory, balance and scientific worth a far better book, for my money, is by Alessi and Trollip.