- What is MacroVOLT™?
- Who developed MacroVOLT™?
- What are the different human roles in the MacroVOLT™ system?
- What is the difference between individual and group MacroVOLT™ modes?
- Must a course be in either individual or group mode?
- Can students ask questions?
- In addition to text, what other types of material can be used in the system?
- Can anyone take our courses online?
- What are the hardware requirements to use the MacroVOLT™ software?
- Must the student, instructor, developer, or administrator use the same computer all the time to access the system?
- Is advertising, spyware, or other invasive material in the MacroVOLT™ software module?
- What name and logo do the students, instructors, and course developers see on the MacroVOLT™ screens?
- What if another organization has registered our desired name as its URL?
- Can we use our regular Web site to route students and staff members to the courses?
- How reliable are the MacroVOLT™ Central Servers?
- Are there any limits to the number of courses, instructors, course developers, or administrators an Affiliate may have?
- How many students can use MacroVOLT™ at the same time?
- Can course developers work collaboratively to design a course?
- How do the various course developers keep from interfering with each other's work?
- How long does it take to create a course?
- How long can a course be?
- Must we develop course materials especially for MacroVOLT™ courses, or can we incorporate materials we already have?
- How much programming skill must the course developers have to use MacroVOLT™?
- Can changes be made to courses after they are developed and placed on the MacroVOLT™ Central Servers?
- Can tests and quizzes be a part of MacroVOLT™ courses?
- Do the instructors have access to student records?
- Must we use the MacroVOLT™ system for our recordkeeping, or can we use our own system?
- Can MacroVOLT™ be used for testing and certification without the instructional components?
- Can MacroVOLT™ use a telephone conference modality?
- Is technical assistance available from MacroVOLT™?
- Who owns the copyright for MacroVOLT™ course materials?
- How do I know my online course will be protected from someone stealing it?
What is MacroVOLT™?
MacroVOLT™ is a service of ICF Macro that provides Web-based teaching and training services. As a MacroVOLT™ Affiliate, you can develop courses for your students through a Web browser using your existing course materials. Students can receive individual, self-paced instruction, or you can use the system to enhance live-group instruction. Tests and quizzes can be administered, and reports of progress and certification also can be produced.
Who developed MacroVOLT™?
MacroVOLT™ was created by ICF Macro. ICF Macro is the professional services subsidiary of Opinion Research Corporation, a public corporation that has been serving American institutions for more than 65 years. Our clients have included Fortune 500 companies; many smaller organizations; colleges and universities; Federal, State, and local governments; nonprofit organizations; trade associations; foundations; and foreign governments.
ICF Macro is one of the leading technology, application, and development organizations in the Nation. Our systems are used daily by thousands of organizations and hundreds of thousands of people. We have been a world-class leader in training and education for four decades.
A team of instructional designers, computer programmers, systems analysts, master teachers and trainers, instructional materials writers, training directors, and educational administrators worked under the noted educator Dr. Edward Briggs to develop MacroVOLT™. Dr. Lewis Eigen, the preeminent educational psychologist and educational administrator, reviewed and tested the system.
What are the different human roles in the MacroVOLT™ system?
Affiliates: Schools or organizations that have signed MacroVOLT™ licensing agreements and may use the system for their education and training activities.
Affiliate Administrators: Staff members designated by an Affiliate to approve courses, appoint course developers, register students, authorize instructors, and generally manage the MacroVOLT™ operation for that Affiliate organization. An Affiliate may have more than one administrator.
Course developers: People appointed by Affiliates to develop or change courses.
Instructors: Staff members appointed by Affiliates to answer student questions (by telephone or e-mail) in group or individual learning settings. Instructors also may give presentations or lectures in group mode. MacroVOLT™ includes an automated "Ask-an-Instructor" feature that facilitates student access to instructor knowledge.
Students: Individuals who learn in individual or group mode as designated by the Affiliate Administrator.
MacroVOLT™ Affiliate Advisors: Each Affiliate has its own MacroVOLT™ Affiliate Advisor, a member of the ICF Macro staff who helps you plan your program and ensures that you are making optimal use of the system.
What is the difference between individual and group MacroVOLT™ modes?
Above all, MacroVOLT™ is versatile. This system enables virtually any distance-learning modality or method, including individual and group modes. In individual mode, each student proceeds through the course at his or her own pace, independently from other students. In the group mode, a number of students simultaneously work through the course, typically with an instructor in "real time." The students might be physically congregated in one location or dispersed—but all students can see, hear, read, and interact with the same material. The level of interactivity will vary widely depending on the course design and the preferences of the Affiliate.
MacroVOLT™ also enables course developers to rapidly deploy individual-mode, self-study courses based on the content generated by live-group sessions.
Must a course be in either individual or group mode?
No. Courses can be hybrids in which different units of instruction are handled in different modes. A group-mode lecture and questions might be followed by individual delivery of text material and then a quiz.
Can students ask questions?
Yes, MacroVOLT™ allows questioning of instructors in both individual and group modes. "Ask-an-Instructor" is a built-in system for individual mode, allowing a student to pose a question to the instructor at any time. (The time it takes to receive an answer, of course, depends on each instructor’s availability as assigned by the Affiliate.) All students have the benefit of viewing the questions and responses. In group mode, MacroVOLT™ features a built-in chat service so that students can ask questions and receive answers, with all students and instructors able to participate. The course designer can choose whether to moderate this mode.
In addition to text, what other types of material can be used in the system?
MacroVOLT™ can use graphics of all kinds—from color photographs to black-and-white drawings. Audio and video can be transmitted. Any unit also can contain an entire presentation, such as PowerPoint slides or Flash animations.
Can anyone take our courses online?
Access to courses is under your control. The Affiliate Administrator can make the following decisions for each course:
- A course is only open to students whose names are entered into the system. The students are registered by the administrator.
- A course is open to anyone who wants to register. Online self-registration relieves the administrator of the registration burden. The administrator has access to the course registration numbers and to registered individuals. In addition, the administrator can specify the terms of online payment, if desired.
- Anyone may apply online. Then, the Affiliate Administrator can choose whom to register.
- Anyone may register provided that he or she pays for the course. Students may pay the Affiliate directly, and then the administrator will register them for the course. Or, students may pay annual tuition to cover the course, and the administrator will register them. Finally, MacroVOLT™ has a secure payment server, and credit cards may be taken online, validated, and debited, with the money transmitted to the Affiliate.
What are the hardware requirements to use the MacroVOLT™ software?
Requirements are minimal because MacroVOLT™ is a Web-based system. Almost all of the software runs on the huge MacroVOLT™ Central Server in Rockville, MD. Each administrator, course developer, instructor, and student downloads a tiny software module that will run on the user’s local PC computer. (The Mac format is not supported at this time.) The PC computer needs no special storage or processing capability since the Central Server carries the load. Broadband Web access (cable modem, DSL, network with T-1) is necessary for courses using audio and video. The system will work with a dial-up connection, but course developers will need to base such courses on text and smaller graphics to avoid frustrating modem users.
Must the student, instructor, developer, or administrator use the same computer all the time to access the system?
No. Any PC computer with a broadband connection to the Internet can access the system—from anywhere in the world. The only requirement is to download the small software module (Flash player) onto the computer, which typically takes less than a minute. Students or staff members may use an office computer, a library workstation, or their home computer.
Is advertising, spyware, or other invasive material in the MacroVOLT™ software module?
No. Nothing tracks activity on your computer, interferes with normal operations, or presents unwanted material.
What name and logo do the students, instructors, and course developers see on the MacroVOLT™ screens?
Like most everything about MacroVOLT™, the answer depends on what you choose. Most Affiliates want to brand their own courses and have students and staff members operate in a system with the look and feel of their organization, graphics, and Web site. As you go through the many screens of MacroVOLT™, realize that everywhere the MacroVOLT™ logo appears, your logo can automatically take its place. Some of our Affiliates, for various reasons, prefer to present their courses under the MacroVOLT™ imprimatur. This decision is left to the Affiliate.
What if another organization has registered our desired name as its URL?
MacroVOLT™ has the right to assign any name within the macrovolt.com domain. In other words, if someone has taken XYZ.edu or XYZ.com, you may still use XYZ.macrovolt.com as long as another MacroVOLT™ Affiliate has not used that name already. We assign names on a first-come, first-served basis.
Can we use our regular Web site to route students and staff members to the courses?
Yes. We provide simple instructions to your Web manager, and the link can be made in minutes. Most students and faculty members will never even realize that they have left your Web site and are on the MacroVOLT™ site.
How reliable are the MacroVOLT™ Central Servers?
Over the past 2 years, our servers have been operational more than 99.965 percent of the time. Most of our very minimal downtime is the result of a failure of the Internet itself. ICF Macro technical staff members are available around the clock to handle any system problems.
If the electricity goes out for an extended period, MacroVOLT™ is powered by its own standby diesel electric generators. In addition to having the most reliable servers currently available, we have redundancy built into the system. On rare occasions, we have to update or enhance the system, which requires that the system be turned off and then turned on again with the new software or components. These updates are almost always done on weekends between midnight and 6 a.m.—our time of lowest usage.
Are there any limits to the number of courses, instructors, course developers, or administrators an Affiliate may have?
MacroVOLT™ can accommodate as many courses as you wish to create. There are no software limits; the only limiting factor is the amount of storage space for the servers. Graphics use more storage than text, and video and audio use much more hard-disk storage space than graphics. We currently handle thousands of hours of audio and video and hundreds of thousands of graphics. We add more storage to our system as needed by our Affiliates.
How many students can use MacroVOLT™ at the same time?
Even with tens of thousands of users, we have never come close to the capacity of our Central Server. The precise answer depends on what the students are actually doing at any one time. For example, viewing a video lecture takes much more system capacity than reading the text of the lecture. Being part of a live session takes much more bandwidth than taking a test. We have had tens of thousands of people connected to our servers in the same hour. We monitor system performance, and if we get close to reaching capacity in any part of the system, we add resources to increase the capacity of that component before the service becomes impaired.
The most common cause of slowdowns is a slowdown of the Internet itself. But the Internet is increasing capacity all the time, and significant slowdowns are rare and getting rarer.
Can course developers work collaboratively to design a course?
Yes. This decision is left to the Affiliate Administrator, who can authorize one or more course developers to create a course.
How do the various course developers keep from interfering with each other's work?
The administrator grants certain developers access to certain courses. Person X cannot alter Person Y's material unless the administrator chooses to give X access to Y's courses. For courses that have more than one developer, internal managers must control the process just like any other development project involving multiple developers.
How long does it take to create a course?
The length of time varies. For each hour of student instruction, it might take 100 hours of course developer time to research the content, create the curriculum and instructional design, write the material and the tests, illustrate them, and support the materials with graphics and audio. In contrast, if a course already exists in another form—such as lecture notes, textbooks, audiovisual materials, and tests—the ratio might be as low as 5 to 1 instead of 100 to 1. On average, courses or workshops in non-distance-learning formats might require a 20 to 1 ratio. Many MacroVOLT™ courses have been transformed from traditional delivery formats and materials, and so the development-time ratio is generally low.
How long can a course be?
As long or as short as you want. A distance-learning course can be a 1-hour training program for a private organization or a 1-year, six-credit graduate-level course. You can define the parameters of the courses to best suit your students and your purpose, and the system will accommodate whatever you define. Some courses are very short, such as a half-hour refresher course on sexual harassment awareness and prevention.
Do we have to develop course materials especially for MacroVOLT™ courses, or can we incorporate materials we already have?
Existing materials—text, graphics, video, audio, or PowerPoint slides—all can be easily imported. In most cases, doing so is as simple as cutting and pasting.
How much programming skill must the course developers have to use MacroVOLT™?
None. Only basic computer literacy is required. If you can send an e-mail with an attached file and operate Microsoft Word, you are ready to develop a MacroVOLT™ course.
Can changes be made to courses after they are developed and placed on the MacroVOLT™ Central Servers?
Absolutely. One of the advantages of online educational programs is that changes can be made as soon as they are desired—no waiting for the next print cycle or living with out-of-date or erroneous material. Course developers can access the system to make changes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Can tests and quizzes be a part of MacroVOLT™ courses?
Yes. Course developers can create tests or transfer existing tests to an online format. The test can include the following types of elements:
- Multiple choice (single select or select all that apply)
- Matching
- Yes/no; true/false
- Short answer/fill in the blanks
- Ranking/ordering
Scores are provided to students at the completion of tests if desired. For each question, the instructor can provide responses showing the student why an answer is correct or incorrect, along with other appropriate information about the answers.
Do the instructors have access to student records?
Student records are maintained in the MacroVOLT™ system. The Affiliate Administrator always has access to these records for all courses (including test results and course completion records). The system allows the administrator to give access to instructors, course developers, guidance counselors, or other staff members.
Must we use the MacroVOLT™ system for our recordkeeping, or can we use our own system?
You can use your own system if you wish. Students can be batch-registered for MacroVOLT™ courses from your computer system to ICF Macro. The completion records and test scores for each student also can be downloaded from the MacroVOLT™ Central Server to your system for your permanent records. Instructors and course developers generally prefer to use the MacroVOLT™ system for monitoring individual student performance because of the built-in data reporting system. For example, the system allows an instructor to see which test question was the hardest, how long the average student spends on a particular unit, or what percentage of students chooses one option over another.
Can MacroVOLT™ be used for testing and certification without the instructional components?
Absolutely. The online testing modules can be used to administer testing and certification programs.
Can MacroVOLT™ use a telephone conference modality?
Yes. Telephone conferences must be scheduled and arranged in the same manner as other live MacroVOLT™ events.
Is technical assistance available from ICF Macro for MacroVOLT™?
Yes. Each Affiliate receives 5 hours of no-cost telephone technical assistance. Additional support is provided for a modest charge. Technical assistance is available to administrators or course developers, and all Affiliates are provided with a technical assistance telephone number. In addition, each Affiliate is assigned a specific MacroVOLT™ Affiliate Advisor, who is available for strategic advice. You can discuss your account at any time with your advisor.
Who owns the copyright for MacroVOLT™ course materials?
Whoever develops the course materials owns the copyright, unless the developer is being paid by an organization. In that case, the organization generally owns the copyright. Some of our Affiliates are nonprofit organizations that place their work in the public domain. By law, the U.S. Government cannot own a copyright; courses developed under Federal contracts are generally in the public domain.
Developing your course on MacroVOLT™ or transferring a course to MacroVOLT™ does not affect your copyright. The original course will still be yours, and you also will own the copyright to the MacroVOLT™ version of the course.
Copyright ownership means that you retain complete control of your own courses, whether they are delivered through MacroVOLT™ or any other form. From a copyright standpoint, ICF Macro is the printer or provider, and the Affiliate is the author and publisher.
How do I know my online course will be protected from someone stealing it?
Some people are concerned that if they put course materials on the World Wide Web, it could be copied by others and used for unapproved purposes. Intellectual property is at no greater risk online than it is on paper. In fact, there are things you can do online that will provide more protections than for printed training materials. For example, the MacroVOLT™ course will be password protected, which means that the only users are the participants that you, the Affiliate, register. So, you have a record of users. Also, search engines cannot index Web pages that are password protected. In addition, intellectual property laws pertain to material on the Web so that, if someone were to try to plagiarize it, copyright laws would apply, similar to how they would in the case of copying printed material. Lastly, the Affiliate can also have students sign a contract when they register that gives the Affiliate even more protection than copyright law. The course could be set up so that every participant who takes it signs (opts in to) an agreement which says the participant will not copy or use the material without permission.
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