All courses are supported by a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). From the VLE students can download or directly access the course Computer Based Training (CBT) package and other on-line materials for the course.

A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a web application that provides a web environment to help extend the classroom onto the web. A generic term for this type of web application is a "Virtual Learning Environment" (VLE). APEcs has opted to use the freely available Moodle VLE. Moodle is an open-source PHP driven VLE which has a particular focus on allowing students to collaborate and communicate with one another. Moodle supports teaching with a range of flexible on-line tools, as well as providing a place to post up on-line resources for courses. It therefore provide the "glue" that holds the teaching of the course together.

The CBT packages contain the majority of the course teaching materials and consist of a set of structured HTML documents which utilise standard web technologies including JavaScript, Macromedia Flash and occasionally Java Applets. This means that to view the CBT materials, you need no special software. All you need is any modern up-to-date web browser which has the freely available Macromedia Flash and Java plugins installed and it is likely that you already have these installed already. You can find out more details about system and browser requirements need to run our CBT packages by reading our computer requirements page.

The teaching material in our CBT packages is arranged into a 3-tier hierarchical structure:

Themes	Major concept groups within a subject area
Modules	Smaller self-contained modules which are colour coded according to difficulty
Steps	A series of pages containing the actual teaching material

APEcs CBT packages emphasise interactive learning in the form of animated material, self-test quizzes and guided examples to ensure the course is interesting and engaging. The student sees a "map" of the material, which shows when subjects must be studied in a particular sequence, and when it is possible to explore them in a different order.

Course themes within a
CBT package

A map of the modules
within a course theme

A learning step within
a course module

If you've never studied one of our APEcs distance learning courses before may wish to browse some samples of our teaching material to gain an understanding of our presentation methods. Our key aim throughout is always to make the teaching material interactive and (hopefully) enjoyable to study. By providing samples of many of our CBT courses we feel that this will help you to decide if our distance learning courses are right for you.

Our courses are designed to work on any modern computer and it is safe to assume that if you are using a computer that is less than four years old, then your computer will meet the minimum system requirements. However, to avoid any problems, we do recommend that you use an up-to-date browser version, (a browser version from early 2005 onwards should work with no problems). A full list of browser versions we know to to be compatible, and further details of system requirements is available in the link below.

View information about minimum system requirements, supported browsers and list of courses samples.

We are continually looking at new ways to improve the design and ease of use of our CBT packages. Most recently, we have introduced a Glossary feature to some of our newer CBT packages and we are currently working towards adding Glossaries to all courses. Whilst browsing the course samples, please note that until this work is complete, many of our courses have either incomplete or lack Glossaries.

In addition to the Glossary feature we are also in the process of developing a search engine that will allow students to search the CBT material using keywords - so watch the news announcements for the progress on this additional tool.

Typically, students are supported in two ways. During the taught part of the course when students are working through the CBT material, students are given the opportunity to participate in a weekly on-line live chat tutorial. During this live chat, students are in direct communication with their course tutors. In the future APEcs also hopes to experiment with audio conferencing during these weekly tutorials. Between weekly tutorials and through out the course, students are supported via discussion forums for which tutors will aim to respond to within 24 hours during a working week. The discussion forums are integrated into the Moodle VLE and are very straight forward to use. For private matters, students can also rely on email to discuss issues with their course tutors.