A small Calgary multimedia company has sprung on to the international e-learning stage with a partnership with Internet software giant Microsoft Corp. to offer online advanced digital media courses.
The training course offered by Multimedia Solutions Inc., which develops the MicroVideo Learning Systems line of products, teaches you everything from how to digitize your daughter’s soccer game and put it on the ’Net as streaming media to teaching corporate IT professionals how to prepare their company’s annual report in digital audio and video.
If the initial free offering is any indication — the company is providing free downloads of its three-hour video courseware until the end of this month — there’s an unfulfilled demand for these kind of online courses, says Jeff Popovich, MicroVideo’s vice-president of marketing.
“We thought this would be a great way to teach the world what we’ve been doing for years . . . let’s make it a simple, step-by-step process and start at the most basic level and take them into an advanced module,” says Popovich.
The 10-employee company inked the deal two months ago with Seattle-based Microsoft, which provided the material for the Introduction to Windows Media Technologies course. The course covers topics including content capturing, basic and advanced encoding techniques, and embedding the Windows Media Player controls in a Web page.
There have been more than 11,500 registrations so far for the free PC-based course. The free course material expires on May 31.
Multimedia Solutions, which purchased the assets of U.S.-based MicroVideo in 1997, is confident that the temporary free offering over the Internet will turn samplers into paying clients. The course will cost $59.95 over the Internet or CD after the trial period expires.
“E-learning is the place to be, but it’s just starting to take hold,” says Popovich.
“We’re at the tip of the iceberg.”
Web Watch:
www.microvideo.com/windowsmedia/
