OnDemand  is a tool for creating and viewing extrinsic performance support component for existing software applications. This review is based on an OnDemand Personal Navigator support system for Microsoft Word as downloaded form the PTS Learning Systems web site. 

OnDemand offers several types of support. 

• Demo - an animated demo of a specific functions in the software.
• Teacher - an interactive animated demo where the learned is prompted to click on screen elements to view each step in the use of a function. 
• Concept - a pop-up window that describes the purpose and use of a specific function. (See figure 1)
• Concurrent - a step by step guide that progressively displays each step in a function. (See figure 1)

Figure 1

A performer can access an OnDemand by clicking a button on the floating tool bar as show in figure 2. 

Figure 2

This display a tabbed window that lets the performer find and select the performance support element from

• a table of content of the available topics (See figure 3)
• a keyword search (See figure 4)
• the topics applicable to the contents of a specific Word document. 

Figure 3

Figure 4

Overall Assessment

I liked the OnDemand performance support system for MS Word. It was easy to access and provided several different types of support. I particularly liked the keyword search for finding topics and the way it can list multiple topics for selected keyword. 

 1999-12-20