Introducing IBM Tutorial Manager/2


TutMgr/2 is an authoring tool to help you create any kind of
interactive tutorials, computer based training, and presentations for
OS/2 Presentation Manager.

People used to learn from teachers and books, However, surveys show that
the retention of information from reading a book or from verbal training
is little more than 20%. Increasingly people are turning to other media
forms for training and skill development.

The universal acceptance of the computer as an information provider has
fundamentally changed the way in which skills are taught and learned. A
more modular, flexible and individual approach is needed:
computer-based-training (CBT) is the cost-effective state-of-the-art
answer to today's education challenges in companies and institutions.

IBM has announced an authoring tool equally suited for the client/server
as well as the individual workstation world. TutMgr/2 helps you rethink
your end-user education.

With Tutorial Manager/2 you can develop easy-to-use and
application-specific tutorials for on-the-job training and skill
development. Tutorials can be integrated into the actual application
itself or run on their own as independent teaching aids.
They can be either interactive programs or simple presentations and they
can include various kind of multimedia elements, such as video and audio.

Together with other IBM products, TutMgr/2 is the vehicle to fulfill your
employees' and customers' education needs quickly and efficiently.

You can ...
 ... create stand-alone training modules to be used anywhere and without
     expensive training facilities
 ... create tutorials linked to business applications to speed up
     learning and improve productivity
 ... build prototypes of applications to test usability and cost
     effectiveness

Benefits:

Tutorial Manager/2 helps you and your business in many ways:.
- Reduced cost for user training
- High quality training material
- Improved training results with interactive tutorials
- Learning by doing in a penalty-free environment
- Increased student acceptance through individual navigation paths
  sequential, non-sequential (hypertext, table of contents, index, Author
  defined navigation), bookmarking
- Improved author productivity with an easy to use language
- no need for a programmer to do application simulations
- Higher revenue with one-time charge (TutMgr/2's run time code can be
  distributed at no additional charges (no runtime fee))
- Ease of Translatability. Since the source files are flat ASCII files
  with tagged contents they can easily be translated. The translator
  doesn't need to have Tutorial Manager/2 itself to do the translation.

Technical highlights

- Runs as a Presentation Manager application under OS/2 2.1 (or above)
- A new authoring language using GML like tags.
- Creation of and interaction handling with all standard Presentation
  Manager controls.
- Graphics support for .BMP, .MET, .ICO
- Multimedia support for .WAV, .MID, .AVS, .AVI, .FLC, .FLI
- Building index and list of contents dynamically.
- Compiler to compress and improve performance of tutorial material.
- Conditional execution through the use of IF, ELSE, CASE and WHEN.
- Passing control to other course parts or programs with BRANCH, BREAK,
  IMBED, CALL, EXIT, and HYPERTEXT links.
- Loop processing with FOR, WHILE, REPEAT, and UNTIL.
- Use of author defined macros.
- Tutorial debugging as an integrated part of the authoring tool.
- Import and export of dialog resources.
- Double Byte Character Set enabled
- Answer analysis through the use of a MATCH function.
- Interface to REXX with parameter passing back and forth.
- Animation capabilities

Hardware and Software requirements

Tutorial Manager/2 runs on any hardware platform supported by
IBM OS/2 Version 2.1, or subsequent releases.
You need about 7MB free disk space. A mouse is recommended.
- A mouse (optional).

Maintenance and update services is done through the PSPAPROD forum
(GO PSPAPROD) on CompuServe.