Part 2: Completing the Course

When you are ready to take the course, log in and click the “My Account” button in the top navigation bar. This opens your personal user account page. Scroll down to the section titled “My Courses.” You will see a table displaying all courses that you have enrolled in. To launch a course, click the title of the course you would like to open.

Once you open a course, you are first brought to the course launch page. If this is the first time you have opened the program, review the course instructions. Below the instructions is a table displaying links to the course lessons, lesson ID numbers, video presentation time, and links for the lesson notebooks. Before launching the first lesson, download and print the first lesson notebook in Acrobat PDF format. The lesson notebook is a reference document displaying all of the slides in the lesson with areas for recording notes. The layout of the lesson notebook is similar to a MS PowerPoint handout. Next, click the title of the first lesson. This opens a new window and loads the lesson player application.

Lesson Interface

Below is a diagram explaining the features of the S2 lesson interface.

Controls and Navigation Below the instructor video are the player controls. You can pause the video and resume play by clicking the Play/Pause Button. To return to the beginning of the video, press the Jump to Start Button. Above the Play/Pause Button is the Video Scrub Bar. You can navigate to other sections in the video by dragging the scrub bar slider to a new point. Once you set the scrub bar slider to a new point, there will be a delay of 5-30 seconds as the player changes the slide and begins buffering the video from the new point. (see TIP for more details)

Sometimes a student may need to rehear what an instructor said a few moments earlier. In these situations, dragging the scrub bar slider backward will usually move the video playhead back too far. It is often difficult to navigate with the scrub bar in increments less than three to five minutes. To go back in the presentation one minute, click the Back One Minute Button located below the Play/Pause Button. If you are unable to finish the lesson in one session, bookmark your place in the video before you quit. You can set a lesson bookmark by clicking the Set Bookmark button located to the right of the Back One Minute Button. When you return later to resume the lesson, you can click the Go To Bookmark button to jump the video to the point where you last ended your session. Once the video begins to play from your bookmarked point, the slide will update to the proper location in synchronization with the video.		A	TIP	A
		A	When navigating to different points in the video by using the Scrub Bar, Go To Bookmark Button, or Section Buttons, there will be a delay as the lesson player communicates with our server and the video begins streaming from a new point. This delay can take as long as 45 seconds depending on the size of the video file, how far you wanted to jump, and the speed of your Internet connection. If you experience a lag time when navigating, do not press any other navigation buttons or move the slider again. Sending more navigation requests to our server can aggravate the delay. Wait until the video has started playing again before pressing any more buttons or moving the slider. If the delay exceeds 60 seconds, close the lesson and open the lesson again.	A
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To navigate to different sections in the presentation, use the Lesson Section Buttons located below the player controls. Pressing a button will jump the video to the beginning of a different section and automatically update the slide.

Completing the Lesson

When a lesson is first launched, the instructor video on the upper left side of the window begins to buffer and play. As the presentation video plays, the text and image slides located on the right side of the window change automatically in synchronization with the instructor video. In most lessons, there is nothing that the student needs to do but watch the presentation and take notes.

In some lessons there are student exercises or supplementary videos at different points in the lesson. When the presentation reaches a point where there is an exercise or supplementary video, the main instructor presentation pauses automatically. View the supplementary video or complete the exercise and when finished, click the Continue Button to resume the main presentation. You can also resume the presentation by clicking the Play Button on the main video control bar located below the instructor video.

When the lesson is finished, click the Quit Button to close the lesson window.

Completing the Course

We recommend that you view each lesson presentation in sequence, starting with Lesson One. Presentation time for lessons can vary anywhere between 15 minutes and 3 hours. If possible, view each lesson without interruption until the lesson is complete. If this is not possible, bookmark your position by clicking the Set Bookmark Button. When you return to complete the lesson, you can click the Go To Bookmark Button to return to the exact position where you left off. If you forget to bookmark your position before you exit the lesson, use the section navigation buttons or the video control slide bar to return to the point where you left off.

Successful completion of online independent-study courses requires discipline. For most online students, it is not practical to block out two or three days of time to complete all lessons back-to-back as one would if enrolled in a classroom seminar. In this case, we recommend that you establish a personal study schedule to ensure that all lessons are completed in a timely fashion. For example, you may decide that each day you will devote your lunch break to completing sections of various lessons or you may decide that every Saturday and Sunday morning you will devote three hours to online study. Regardless of how you allocate your time, maintaining a strict personal study schedule will keep you on track in completing all lessons before the 30-day time period expires.

Once you have completed all lessons, you should be ready to take the final examination.