KnowledgeNet delivers value.

* Microsoft Office XP, online, 2002, KnowledgeNet (877-602-5638, www.knowledgenet.com), $95 per person.

The Office courses have a module-lesson-topic structure. Each lesson begins with objectives and a pre-test. Afterwards, the student can see the correct answer to any item missed and receive an explanation. (The user can bypass the pretest, but a score of zero is recorded.)

From this point the student can take two paths: Complete or Personal. The Personal path includes only the lessons that were not answered correctly in the pretest. The KnowledgeNet courses give excellent explanations of how to use old and new features of each Office program As an explanation is given, the steps are demonstrated on the screen.

You can also replay the last explanation. And as a further aid, the student can always go back to any prior module, lesson, or topic by clicking on what are called "crumbs." Because program operations are often cumulative, with one lesson building on previous ones, I found this very helpful.

In the "hands-on" section, the student is given specific steps to perform. A mistake prompts feedback telling you how to do the step correctly. The student can also do the hands on work in what is called "show me" mode. In this mode, the course shows you how to a single step or the entire procedure step by step.

Upon completion of a lesson, students take a post-test. The course audio simply speaks the on-screen text. Users have a variety of reports available to them that can be viewed on screen or printed.

Recommendation

The KnowledgeNet self-paced courses for Office XP are a good value. My one complaint is that it would be nice if the courses used real world examples and projects for the practice sections. They would make the training even more meaningful for the student.

KnowledgeNet product rating

Holds user interest    ***

Production quality     *** 1/2

Ease of navigation     ****

Interactivity          ***

Value of content       *** 1/2

Instructional value    *** 1/2

Value for the money    ***

Overall rating         *** 1/2

Outstanding     ****

Very good       ***

Good            ***

Above average   ** 1/2

Average         **

Below Average   * 1/2

Poor            *

NA              Not applicable

NR              Not rated (usually not enough information)