Lotus to Release User-Oriented
Courseware on CD-ROM
Computer Reseller News, July 1, 1996

Info For You

Recognizing changing market and channel partner needs, Lotus Development Corp. plans to release its user-oriented courseware on CD-ROM this month for custom-tailoring.

The content covers topics aimed at Notes users, not high-level developers and administrators. The material previously was bound and sold only in workbooks, as is the case with most vendors using channel partners to deliver technical training.

Lotus Education picked PTS Learning Systems, Inc., which already writes, packages and helps co-market customized training material on CD-ROM for SmartSuite. King of Prussia, Pa.-based PTS is also a Lotus Authorized Education Center.

PTS uses a proprietary tool called CustomDOC to compile and arrange the content. Unlimited licenses will be sold for $2,500.

Because Notes deployments are not universally standard, the type of content needed to train users-and the varying depths of understanding each needed-obviously has varied. As a result, many LAECs, especially those Business Partners with Notes developers on staff that are focused on integrating and deploying Notes, were writing their own Notes user-level courseware.

"It's natural progress of our relationship with PTS," said Terri Purinton, Lotus Education marketing manager. Lotus did solicit bids for the project.

LAEC managers, such as Lynn Cardarelli, see the new approach saving customers time and money. "It makes more sense to take out the areas that [the users] aren't going to need to know," said Cardarelli, Lotus Notes program manager with Infotec Commercial Systems Inc., a trainer based in Santa Ana, Calif., with eight LAECs around the country. "Why spend time writing courseware when the management of a large-scale rollout is so much work?" she said. "I just don't think it's the most cost-effective way for the clients."

John Rooney, vice president of PTS' product division, said the LAEC channel has been asking for customizable courseware for some time. "We call it chunking," Rooney said. "Before, you couldn't break it down into smaller bits. You just had the instructor break it down orally."

Due in part to the CustomDOC engine, Novell Inc. picked PTS as its worldwide distribution partner last year for its authorized curriculum on PerfectOffice. That partnership expired with the WordPerfect division sale to Corel Corp.

Purinton said Lotus has no plans to take the custom-courseware approach with its certification-based authorized content. The material covered under the PTS partnership program, for example, is not covered in any exam required to become certified by the developer and, as a result, is available for purchase from anyone, not just LAECs.

Under Notes Release 3, Lotus sold two, one-day courses titled "Basic Notes Concepts" and "Notes Technical User." That content was updated and blended into four, half-day modules that cover basic, intermediate, advanced and mobile-user topics.

Adding that level of modularity can now be viewed as a transition period to the electronic distribution and power to customize expressed in the PTS deal. Lotus still will own the content, but PTS will use CustomDOC to compile and produce the CD-ROM.

Copyright © 1996-1997 PTS Learning Systems. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without the expressed written permission of PTS Learning Systems is prohibited.