Case study: OMV Petroleum & Natural Gas - CD-ROM

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Design and production of an e-Learning CD-ROM for schools on the subject of “Petroleum and Natural Gas - From Fossil to Fuel” on behalf of the OMV

Tasks:

The CD-ROM “Petroleum and Natural Gas - From Fossil to Fuel” was launched by the OMV AG with the aim of replacing a school folder on petroleum and natural gas that had been in use since the 1980s. The task of designing and producing the CD-ROM was entrusted to checkpointmedia ? from editing to copying. Together with some 50 experts from the OMV around 150 pages of text and hundreds of graphics and animations were created. In addition, we sifted through the photo archives not only of the OMV but also of many other companies in search of suitable illustrative material.
In order to create a product that was perfectly suited to the needs of the target group ? teachers and pupils- a group of teachers and pupils was invited to participate in the project, and they provided valuable input in a series of feedback and trial sessions. A commission from the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture also provided feedback during the course of the project and, once it was completed, gave the CD-ROM its seal of approval as a teaching aid.

Solutions:

The CD-ROM “Petroleum and Natural Gas - From Fossil to Fuel” is an autostart CD playable on all operating systems (from Windows 98 SE or Mac OS 9 upwards) and all screens with a resolution of at least 800x600. It starts automatically and contains all the usual features such as full text search, site map, index and a comprehensive help section to explain all the functions available. A glossary containing more than 250 headings provides explanations and information on new terms at a click.
To make huge, almost inconceivable numbers (“a hundred million tonnes of crude oil”) easier to grasp, a calculator was developed that breaks them down into manageable units ? using images such as bathtubs full to the brim, boiled eggs and the length of tank trains.
A tool was developed especially for teaching and presentations that enables users to take screens from anywhere on the CD and rearrange them to form their own, “made-to-measure” sequences. For school classes that do not have their own computer all the screens were added as pdf-files, each of which can be opened and immediately printed out (as overhead transparencies, for instance) by means of the “Print” function on each screen.
To make a large number of graphics, animations, videos and photos available for other uses, a media library was created from which all the media can be loaded onto the local computer in high-resolution quality. By means of a “notepad” texts on the CD can be stored for later use or edited immediately, or comments can be added in the text itself.
Many of the figures on the CD change from year to year, especially economic and ecological data, for example on consumption and harmful emissions. For this reason, an update feature was included that makes it possible to download updated texts, figures and media from an OMV server onto the local computer. After this download, the CD-ROM automatically loads this new data whenever it is started. It is of course also possible to burn a new CD with the updated data.
The CD-ROM “Petroleum and Natural Gas - From Fossil to Fuel” was first presented by the OMV at the “Gewinn” trade fair at the end of October 2004. At the beginning of 2005 it was sent to every school in Austria free of charge. Because demand for the CD-ROM was so high (also within the OMV company itself) the current edition is already the fourth. An English-language version of the CD-ROM is also being prepared.