Course Interactive Features

COM Fundamentals I uses a number of interactive features to help you learn the material. You may want to review the following features before starting your coursework.

Throughout the course, you will find multiple-choice quizzes and hands-on exercises. These learning checks will allow you to assess what you've learned and, if necessary, know what to go back and review.

A Slideshow is an applet that presents a series of images that you can flip through, either forward or backward. In this course, we will be using Slideshows to step through processes and pieces of code.

Whenever you see this graphic within the course, an applet that explains or dissects some element of a design pattern will follow. Move your mouse cursor over the elements of the image outlined in red to display pop-up explanations.

This course includes online Simulation applets that allow you to perform tasks necessary to understanding COM without having to leave the DistributedNetworks learning environment. These simulations are designed to give you a firsthand view of how things work in COM Fundamentals I.
If you cannot or do not wish to run the Simulation applet, each simulation is accompanied by a detailed description of the steps in the simulation.

Throughout this course, you will notice "sidebar" links to pages that contain examples or more information on a topic. These sidebars contain important information that is required for successful completion of quizzes or exercises. Please take the time to read all sidebars in this course.

Many of the terms used in the course are defined in a JavaScript glossary. The terms appear as italicized and underlined in the lesson text. Clicking a glossary term opens a pop-up window with the definition.