SOLUTIONS

Interactive Solutions Expands Core Team

Interactive Solutions is pleased to welcome two new training consultants to its core team of Human Resource Development Professionals.

Sally Little will be responsible for the delivery of training and consultancy in the area of Performance Management and Management Skills. Based in the UK, Sally has worldwide learning and development consultancy experience working in many countries across Europe, the US, Africa and Asia. Her expertise in all aspects of the management processes, design and delivery of international training programs, evaluation of learning and return on investment analysis will add considerable strength to Interactive Solutions' offerings to its global clients.

Tony Walmsley will be responsible for the delivery of training and consultancy in the areas of Marketing, Sales and Sales Force Development skills. Tony has considerable hands-on experience of leading and managing sales teams in global business and working across a wide variety of countries and regions on the development of marketing and communication strategies. His expertise in all aspects of sales force development, and in creating training programs which supports the roll out of new business development strategies, will be a valuable addition to Interactive Solutions' strength in these areas.

Benjamin Moore Learning Center

Raising the standards, once again, in the paint and décor market, Benjamin Moore Paints is launching a virtual university to provide quality education and support to Painting Contractors and Color Consultants.

Interactive Solutions is Benjamin Moore's long-standing provider of training solutions and has now expanded this initial marketing concept into a comprehensive Virtual University complete with Alumni and Community Forums. Through a combination of Certification and Qualification programs, students and clients can develop skills and take advantage of marketing initiatives, sales support and interaction with colleagues.

Southwest Airlines

Interactive Solutions and Southwest Airlines have launched the flight of their lives!

Interactive Solutions is pleased to have launched the Southwest Airlines eLearning, OnBoarding program. This program is aligned with the ILT course to help new employees understand the culture and core values of Southwest Airlines and to become familiar with the benefits and general information about SWA Life. This web based initiative provides new hires at Southwest Airlines the opportunity to learn the basics as they prepare for the classroom course. It also serves as a reference tool following training for all new hires. To effectively convey to new employees, the much written about culture of Southwest, the Interactive Solutions team spent time at Southwest's facility and met with their agency in Austin, Texas.

Rhema Group

Together, we cover the world, and expand our training solutions!

Rhema Group and Interactive Solutions have entered into a joint venture. Rhema Group is an HR consultancy group headquartered in London, England. Their primary focus is on HR training support solutions. Together, we can also provide a fully comprehensive training solution, using a variety of modalities and media. Jeremy Francis, Managing Director, Rhema Group states, "We are proud to represent Interactive Solutions in the United Kingdom and Europe and to provide instructional design, client interfacing and relationship management services on their behalf. Working closely with Interactive Solutions we are also able to offer new innovative products and services to our clients. The result is a powerful two-way collaboration which provides demonstrable added value to both organizations' clients."

Development Update

Interactive Solutions has perfected a Flash based courseware engine that runs in a browser based environment and communicates with a Learning Management System of choice or it can also function as a stand-alone training tool.

This courseware engine is supported by an XML framework that is easily editable and enables components, including page files, topic structures, lessons and interactive object sequences, to be removed, added or rearranged with ease. The Flash engine itself is comprised of a series of Flash based templates that draw in the XML content with a centralized main application that holds all globalized functions, including navigation, and the menu system and takes care of all loading, status, LMS communication and progress information. The benefits of this system are extensive, enabling the rapid development of content and the organization of assets and individual page files into reusable learning objects.

Emerging Technology Update

Interactive Solutions has successfully developed a Mobile Learning (mLearning), dynamic courseware engine built in J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition).

The application is a shell comprised of pre-built templates and a menu system that reaches out to a web server at runtime and populates itself with XML based content and images. This content is linked to a content management system (CMS) for ease of update. When a user starts a course, the course engine reaches out to the specific course directory and retrieves the course structure's XML file. This file lists every page in the course, the type of page (which determines which page template the engine will use to display the content), and the URL to the content XML file for each page. The course engine uses this information to build the dynamic menu system and navigation. When the user selects a page from the course, the engine determines the page type from the XML file, loads the appropriate display template, and retrieves the content from the URL specified in the XML data.