Navigation I is the first of six supplemental courses for students at OCSC. It is a three-hour course, and is required for certification, which allows students to charter sailboats. Nav I is offered twice-monthly. Even so, it is sometimes difficult for students to attend. OCSC decided to create an online course to make it easier for students to learn this critical material. I taught this course, among others, as an instructor at OCSC. At that time, we had a short outline of topics to be covered. It was up to each instructor to elaborate on the points in the outline, and to use a white board to illustrate the points. Consequently, I had to assemble visual materials for the online course and create written content as well. I worked closely with Rich Jepson, head of training at OCSC, to create content that would be consistent with the material presented by other instructors in class. I created the online course in 2004. I built it in the then-current version of Flash, Flash 2004MX. I decided Flash was the most appropriate technology because (1) it works well cross-platform in most computers, (2) it has a high degree on interactivity which would help keep the student's interest, and (3) we could build in a self-assessment quiz at the end. This is the most complicated Flash project I've worked on. I needed to learn a lot about the Flash scripting code to manage the interactivity. I think the end result was worth the effort. The course is still used today.
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