Acce-Lerator

Acce-Lerator is the key technology behind the FIT (Faster Induction Training) solution enabling the rapid customisation or creation of learning materials that can be delivered online via a learning portal or within your organisation using your learning management system.

Below is a summary of its key features. To get more in-depth information go to www.acce-lerator.com.

What is Acce-Lerator?

Acce-Lerator® is the key technology behind the FIT™ (Faster Induction Training) programme – see www.fasterinduction.com. It enables rapid customisation of the programme’s learning materials, or the creation of entirely new courses, that can be delivered online via a learning portal or within your organisation using your learning management system.

Acce-Lerator is an online e-learning authoring system, usable wherever there’s access to the Internet. Courses that you create, or license from our course libraries, are stored in your specific area of our central web server and may be totally customised, including adding your own assets such as graphics, Flash animations or other resources.

When you have completed the development stage, the course materials are automatically packaged up and sent to your PC as a Zip file. When ‘unzipped’, this file contains everything needed to either launch the material on the local PC/network via your learning management system, or via our Train for work learning portal, for delivery to your learners.

Courses can be easily maintained or modified to suit the needs of different groups or even individuals. As the materials are stored centrally, they can be readily shared with colleagues.

Who's it for?

If you are involved with teaching or training others and would now like to blend e-learning into the range of methods you use, Acce-Lerator is for you!

We have made the system easy to use. If you can currently use Word or PowerPoint and are happy ‘browsing’ the Web, you already have the level of skills required to use Acce-Lerator. You certainly do not need to understand HTML programming or web design!

Acce-Lerator empowers you to easily tailor all courses in the FIT libraries to your specific needs. Also, to develop your own materials that can be used as pre-learning modules, revision exercises, assessment tests or entire courses, with the added benefit that these materials can be easily tailored to meet the needs of specific groups of students –  personalised e-learning is now realistically achievable!

Instructional design support

Creating effective e-Learning requires rather different skills to developing more traditional learning materials. As Acce-Lerator is targeted at relatively novice e-Learning developers, we have built a number of unique tools into the system. These are found in the Help menu of Acce-Lerator.

• Screencraft - a short 3 to4 hour online course (developed using Acce-Lerator) on the fundamentals of instructional design.
• LODA - the unique 'Learning Object Design Assistant' provides guidance on the choice and structure of over 40 learning objects for use in different contexts.
• Exemplars - a series of LODA exemples illustrating best practice design.

In addition, useful 'hints and tips' can be found on our website and we will be keeping this up to date with suggestions from our users.

Accessibility

Meeting accessibility requirements has been a key aspect in developing the system, so that the learning materials produced with Acce-Lerator are available to those with disabilities or visual impairment.

Acce-Lerator courses may be launched in three different text sizes and students may choose the colour combination of text and background. In addition, content is compatible with a wide range of accessibility tools such as screen readers.

Features in Acce-Lerator, and guidance to developers provided in the Help system, ensure that materials may be designed with accessibility issues in mind, for example, the provision of ‘alternative text’ on all graphics.

Who is using it currently?

Acce-Lerator has been the enabling course creation technology for three national learning portals:

• Train for Work - is the student portal for the FIT solution, providing access to key programmes such as The Responsible Employee and The Responsible Manager
  (see www.trainforwork.net )
• Ready for work - a free service designed to give those in full time education or seeking their first job key business awareness skills.
  (see www.readyforwork.com )
• MRSA - you can make a difference - infection control training programmes for the Healthcare community, accessible by over 60% of NHS Trusts over the last year
  (see www.mrsa.no.com )

In addition, Acce-Lerator has been licensed by learndirect, and is extensively used in more than 150 UK colleges of Further Education and many adult community learning centres. 

As a specialist training and learning organisation, we believe that technology is best applied within the context of an overall learning strategy.  Acce-Lerator is a component in our FIT induction training solutions programme, which also comprises customisable content libraries and the skills training required for implemention.

Key features of the system

• Ease of use
• Template/wizard driven system
• Promotes a pragmatic pedagogic approach
• Built in instructional design for those new to e-Learning
• Encourages a 'learner centred' approach with a wide range of question types and options
• Cut and paste your script from Microsoft Word
• Conforms to accessibility standards
• Content runs in a Microsoft or Firefox browser without the need for 'plugins' or a 'player'
• Content is SCORM compliant including support for book-marking and passing test scores

Technical requirements:

Software requirements

• Windows 98 or higher
• Internet explorer 5 or higher
• Java 1.4 or higher.
• Winzip

Hardware requirements

• Screen at least 1024 x 768 pixels, but bigger is better.
• Internet connection (minimum 56K modem, broadband improves performance especially when uploading media assets such as graphics.)

FIT Solutions

Low-cost access via our learning portal

Every single employer can benefit from these programmes. Larger employers can of course afford to develop their own induction programmes or customise this one ... read more

One-time licence fee

For perhaps larger employers, particularly those wishing to get more involved with e-Learning on a realistic cost basis, there can be no better way than licensing the content in these two unique programmes... read more

Easy DIY customisation

When you licence our courses, you also licence our easy-to-use authoring system, Acce-Lerator. This system, selected by the DfES, is currently helping more than 100 FE colleges to develop e-learning content... read more