Electronic Performance Support Systems - Introduction
the need to use technology to connect knowledge resources that seemed to complement each other. In guest editor Richard Horn's particular case, he was engaged in creating both tutorials and online reference material for software companies, so it was natural to assume that end users had computers and had no other way to learn or support themselves using the software than by using what was provided with the software. He also knew that most purchasers of software did not want to spend much time learning it, but want to open the packaging, load the software, and only learn when it was necessary to do so. One software debugging product for which he was creating support materials had the ability to effectively run two programs at the same time in a single-tasking DOS environment—something one needs to do to debug programs. He used the debugging program to spy on itself and found a way to run the customer's software program while tutorials and online reference systems were running as well. The end result was a seamless environment of the application software, learning system, reference system, and advisor system.