Week 1 Welcome & Introductions

So just the characters and the 16 colors that you'd have found on a 3270 display terminal. :D  Most of our training was around system skills, so we were able to create very precise simulations of those system screens. The trainee could enter information into fields just as they would on the job and they'd get corrective feedback in response. Some of it was simple text, yes, or text "overlaid" onto a walkthrough of a system screen. We also had a function hotkey that if they were on an actual system screen, they could press an F key and get the valid values for that field from our documentation, and for some fields, press another F key to take a short just in time tutorial on how to choose the correct data to enter. In our courses, we created branching scenarios, adaptive assessments, and did quite a lot given what we think of as "limitations" these days. It was actually an excellent way to develop instructional design skills especially around being highly organized when structuring content. Whenever I hear people reiterating stereotypes of people of "a certain age" not having tech skills, I have to laugh.  Would that I could take them back in a time machine when we had to program all of this instead of using WYSIWYG editors!