SmartForce™ Web is a system for deploying SmartForce courseware over an intranet. It has been designed to allow students to locate SmartCourses easily, using their web browsers. They can then choose to download courses to their computers and play them locally, or play them live over their organization's intranet. It also allows administrators to track student usage of their training library and to monitor student progress.
SmartForce Web is presented just like a typical web site, with linked HTML pages, so that students and administrators can navigate their way around the product easily. Once a student has found the course they want to study, they simply click a Download or a LivePlay icon. If they choose to download a course, they follow a few simple steps to install the course on their hard drive. If they choose to take the course online, it immediately starts up on screen.
It takes just two steps to get started:
If you download a course to your computer, you need to use the Remove/Record Return utility to uninstall it after you've completed the course. The utility also returns a record of your progress to your training administrator.
If this is the first time you've used SmartForce Web, you will need to download and install the Player and Remove/Record Return utility. You need to do this only once, since these components work with all SmartCourses and can be used repeatedly.
Before you install the Remove/Record Return utility, you should take note of the following details, which you will be asked to enter during installation:
FTP server address:
Username:
Password:
To download the Setup program, click the appropriate link below:
Once you've downloaded the Setup program, you need to run it to install the SmartForce Player and the Remove/Record Return utility on your computer.
To access a SmartCourse using SmartForce Web, first click the Courseware hyperlink on the home page. This will bring you to the Courseware page, which displays a graphic of the SmartForce e-Learning Catalog. From the Courseware page you can quickly find a course by clicking the list of available courses link.
Alternatively, by clicking one of the hotspots on the Catalog graphic, you can navigate through the SmartCourse library, browsing information on curricula and the courses in each curriculum. You can even find out exactly which topics are covered in a course and the number of study hours it entails.
To take a course online, click the LivePlay icon on the course description page. The course starts up, its front screen displays, and you can start working through the units.
To download a course, click the Download icon on the course description page.
Note: If the course has not been made available for you to play live, there will be no LivePlay icon on the course description page. Similarly, if the course has not been made available for you to download, there will be no Download icon. You can request the course from your training administrator.
After you click the Download icon, you will be taken to a page that tells you how much disk space you need to install the course on your computer. Here you click the Download button to download a self-extracting EXE file to your hard drive.
Next you need to run the EXE file to install the course. When the Select Course Installation Type dialog box displays, click OK to install the course on your computer. In the Choose Installation Location dialog box, click OK to accept the default directory, cbtlib.
Once the course is installed, you can run it from your Windows Start menu or from Program Manager.
