Our trainees are located all over the world but subject to technology restrictions (they all have to rely on expensive slow satellite internet connection) We currently have a very basic online training program (retail product specific) that is outdated,'boring' and very manual to manage.

Due to our bandwidth limitations we are going to create an offline media rich and interactive self study CBT training program and then back it up with online assessment for certification. The issue now is soley software and programs to use. Do we need two programs, or is there one that can do both? (we don't use an LMS)- any advice is well appreciated.

Rebecca

If you're going to offer anything 'online' then you'll need a way to validate the user (login) and at least report on their results.

If those needs are pretty basic, you could code all that up with some fairly simple web pages (ASP, PHP, etc).

However, you're then approaching what an LMS can do. Would it be better to look for an affordable LMS as opposed to trying to build half of one? Perhaps... There are a lot of LMS products out there ranging in costs and capabilities. Many are 'affordable' and may improve the management aspect you currently find difficult.

For the content, you could certainly build a hybrid product - a primary content taught and reviewed on CD with the assessments online. Done properly, you could possibly pull the assessment from the online location into the CD-base CBT for a seamless interface/experience. That goes beyond the LMS/SCORM model but is certainly possible.

OR, just link from the CBT to an online site where users login, select, and go through the assessment.

To create this content, CD and online, you shouldn't need more than one authoring tool...though that depends which you pick and where your company skills lie. Flash would be able to handle both requirements, as would other products. Basic tools, however, may not.

One company I know of, and work with frequently, that could help consult on this issue is ICS Learning Group (http://www.icslearninggroup.com) - they certainly have the expertise to at least advise, if not carry through, such a plan.
CM

Any opportunity to "push" the media to a local store (C-drive, CD, local server)? Been using this strategy for a long time.

Even though many LMS systems, etc... have "offline player and synch" options, we found with our constraints, that an effective low-bandwidth assessment with references to locally stored media that didn't utilize bandwidth allowed us to acheive essentially the same as we were looking for from other options (you do give up things like bookmarking and knowing exactly what screens people "hit", but total use of the asset is reportable).