scope:

Description of Driving Event:

In the 1995-1996 timeframe the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) began development of a distance learning capability under the umbrella of the Professional Development Initiative (PDI). This distance learning capability eventually evolved from a Safety and Mission Assurance discipline system into the Site for Online Learning and Resources (SOLAR) (http://solar.msfc.nasa.gov), currently one of NASA's primary distance learning resources. The intent of the initial development effort was to design and implement a prototype system for the Safety and Mission Assurance discipline. One of the considerations for that development effort was to concentrate development activities on basic system functionality (such as the Learning Management System that managed testing, test results and user account information) and course materials. Many other functions such as website search capabilities were accomplished using "shareware" or "freeware" in order to reduce costs and/or development time. Most of these software packages performed well in the system; however, as other changes were made to the system or external events such as Year 2000 occurred, problems arose. These problems were mostly minor and related to the lack of support from the developers of these shareware/freeware applications. In each case a solution was found for the problem but not without impacting resources that were developing new capabilities or course materials.