According to Wikipedia instructional design is the practice of arranging media and content to help learners and teachers transfer knowledge most effectively. We like to say that instructional design is a logical approach to designing instructional materials and learning activities to meet both the needs of the learner and the objectives of the organisation.

We run Authoring and Instructional Design workshops regularly, check our events section for more details. We can also give dedicated workshops for your organisation, on your premises, for up to 10 people. Contact us for prices.

In a nutshell - Pentium 2 with 32 megabytes of RAM and 40 Megabytes of disk Space. But, we've produced a short (and easy to digest) technical specification document which answers this and other technical questions you may have.Read it now

The Learning Pool content is designed to run on low spec PCs and doesn’t need the latest hardware to run correctly. Find a more detailed answer to this question in our short (and easy to digest) technical specification document which answers this and other technical questions you may have. Read it now

We run Authoring and Instructional Design workshops through the country on a regular basis. Go to the events section to find out more.

The first time you publish a course you'll be asked to register the product. Just follow the on screen instructions and register the product so that we can keep you informed of any changes we make. Registration is a one time only activity.

You'll only need to register once and this will last for as long as you continue to subscribe to Learning Pool.

Only registered versions of the product can produce e-learning projects. You can use the unregistered version for as long as you want but you must register to publish the e-learning.

Nothing. Registration of the Authoring Tool is free to all Learning Pool subscribers.

You can always get your IT folks to call our support desk but as a starter you may want to tell them that: The installation will write the software to c:\Program Files\Authoring Tool by default and the user can then change this to a different location but must be local to the machine. Installation will write various OCX files required by the software to the system folder of the local machine. Launching the software will create a folder called c:\Learning Pool by default for user courses. The user can then use the Global Settings to select another location. When using the software it will need to add/edit & delete from the windows temporary folder & the registry. The installation will work fine over thin client deployment or through active directory.

The Video Studio we previewed in the beta versions of the software for creating Flash video proved to have a number of quirks with different video formats and we felt it was not stable enough for this first live release. We intend to work to correct these issues and release with a future upgrade in the coming months. In the meantime there are various stand-alone solutions for converting standard video files to Flash video. If you want to use one of these, please call our support team and they will advise you.

If you are interested in becoming a subscriber and would like to find out more about the Learning Pool service, contact us for a guest login or request one here.

Unlimited access to over 100 e-learning courses; multi user license for our Authoring tool so you can create your own e-learning; 4 free places on our Authoring and Instructional Design workshops; access to the Learning Pool community (so you can share); access to our picture library with over 1,200 images; free consultancy days; free events and networking opportunities.

Our subscription is discounted for local authorities in England and Wales and is calculated on the number of officers employed at the council. The annual subscription rates are based on a 2-year commitment, with the price being held at the same level for year one and year two. Read more

DLE stands for Dynamic Learning Environment. It’s not called an LMS because it does far more than your standard Learning Management System does. Our DLE allows you to evidence the learning taking place, like any standard LMS, as well as giving you a platform to embrace the benefits of Web 2.0 technologies. Read more.

SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model and it is the technical standard used to design and build e-learning so that it can be tracked by a Learning Management System. All our content is built to the SCORM (1.2) standard.

There is no one agreed definition on what RSS stands for but the most widely used definition is Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a format for delivering regularly changing web content directly to individual users' PC's.

There are different news readers popping up all the time but perhaps the most well known are:
Windows: Newz Crawler, FeedDemon, Awasu
Browser: Mozilla Firefox
Mac OS X: Newsfire, NetNewsWire
Web: Bloglines , FeedZilla , NewsGator , Microsoft Live , My Yahoo!
Plus: iGoogle

Bear in mind that policies or procedures may be carried out differently in different organisations.

If so, remove this information before you share.

If you think there may be copyright issues with sharing content, eg if it has been created by an external party, contact us for advice.

There are no limits on the size of the files you can share but it will take some time to share very large files. If you think your files are too large, send us your content in a CD and we will share it for you.