Allen Communication Announces Designer's Edge 1.1

Major enhancements include open data structure, test item generator, search
and replace, spell checker and more

SALT LAKE CITY, UT, May 13, 1996 - Today at the Interactive '96 Conference
in Atlanta, GA, Allen Communication announced Designer's Edge 1.1, the
latest version of its popular Designer's Edge pre-authoring instructional
design tool. Designer's Edge is a performance support system for
instructional designers that delivers productivity and standardization
benefits in an authoring tool independent environment. Designer's Edge 1.1
will begin shipping June 30, 1996.

"We first released Designer's Edge in November 1995 and have been blown
away with the incredible interest in this category-defining tool," said
Rex Allen, president of Allen Communication. "What we're finding is that
companies are utilizing this tool on a site-license level to help them
standardize and improve the way they develop technology-based training
across the organization. Plus, users are seeing big increases in
productivity, which is a critical return for any organization. Version 1.1
of Designer's Edge will do even more to increase productivity and further
benefit organizations' instructional design process."

Several new features will be offered in Designer's Edge 1.1, including open
data structure, a test item generator, a search and replace engine, a
spell checker and additional enhancements to existing features.

The open data structure will allow all design-project data to be accessible
through a common database, using Microsoft Access as the default standard.
Version 1.0 of Designer's Edge does incorporate the use of a database, but
only for elements contained in the medialog. This new feature will allow
Designer's Edge 1.1 users to import any data from external files, such as
objective lists, video information, etc. Performance in this area will
also be increased through the use of Microsoft's DAO (data access objects)
technology to read and write design data. This feature is especially key
to large organizations that have significant amounts of pre-existing
training data that they want to directly import into their instructional
design plan.

"We at Boeing have numerous pre-existing databases for task analysis, media
selection, objectives and other types of instructional design data," said
Ben Drinkwater, senior principal engineer in training applied technology
at Boeing. "For example, with our advanced military aircraft programs, we
literally have tens of thousands of tasks that need to be incorporated in
our instructional design plan. This new feature in Designer's Edge 1.1
will be a great productivity boon for us in helping us to organize our
plan more quickly while incorporating existing data seamlessly."

Another major features for training developers is the addition of an
entirely new task, the test item generator. In this new task, users will
write test items using wizard dialog boxes. These test questions will be
linked to specific performance objectives, which are also generated and
organized in Designer's Edge. The relationship between test items and
performance objectives will be easy to see in the test item interface,
which uses the tree view metaphor to visually show relationships between
needs, goals, objectives and test items. Users will also be able to assign
test questions to the course map using the same click-and-drag process
that is currently used to assign objectives and strategies.

"Designer's Edge is already widely recognized for its ability to help
trainers organize their training material and develop powerful
instructional design plans," said Allen. "The test item generator will
further assist them in the development of quality training by giving them
a wizard that not only walks them through the writing of good test
questions, but then also links those questions back to specific course
objectives."

The spell checker and search and replace engine are also new additions in
Designer's Edge 1.1. Both of these features allow the user to set the
parameters of the search, whether by entire design project or at the task
level. The search and replace engine will be especially useful in large
courses for finding a specific location in the design (i.e. a specific
place in the storyboard) or to update content that has changed.

Designer's Edge 1.1 also includes many other enhancements, including new
needs and goals reports, better handling of global preferences, the
ability to add media objects directly into the medialog and an improved
"gain approval" interface.

This product upgrade will be available June 30, 1996, and will be shipped
free of charge to all registered Designer's Edge users. New copies of
Designer's Edge can be purchased for $2,995 through Allen Communication or
its registered VAR channel. Significant education and quantity discounts
are available.

Allen Communication, founded in 1981, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Times
Mirror, a large international media and information company. Headquartered
in Salt Lake City, Utah, with offices in London, Boston, Chicago,
Washington DC and San Francisco, Allen Communication is dedicated to
meeting all of the needs of multimedia developers in the training and
education marketplace. It produces Quest, an industry-leading authoring
tool, and Designer's Edge, revolutionary pre-authoring software. In
addition to software products, Allen Communication produces award-winning
custom training courses for clients worldwide, including IBM, AT&T,
American Express, Mack Truck and Prudential Securities.
 
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