Main Site
The main site was hosted on a subdomain of GMTA’s site. On the main page, the user was given 4 options to choose from – these were to better direct users to what they needed to do. Essentially a user had to register on the site and based on their registration data, they would be directed to the correct location.
Most users needed to receive training, so they had the following options:
- watching a streaming video of the training (it was an FLV movie hosted on a dedicated Flash media server)
- download an .AVI version of the video
- request a physical DVD be sent to them
Once the user finished the video (or watched it offline) they could proceed through to the short quiz. This was incorporated to provide some level of assurance that the user was familiar with the material. The quiz questions were randomized from a bank of questions and the order of the answers were even randomized to prevent sharing of answers.
After passing the quiz (users were given unlimited attempts) the user could print out a certificate that would be accepted by the Georgia DDL when issuing the new or renewed CDL.
Administrative Portal
One major requirement of the project was to provide completed trainee data to the American Trucking Association (ATA). This group was responsible for physically issuing the Highway Watch ID cards and keeping a national database of trained drivers. To allow GMTA staff to send this data, we included an export function within the administrative portal that would export completed trainee data in an Excel compatible format. This file was then sent to ATA for processing.
In addition to the export functionality, GMTA staff also had the ability to edit any user’s record to fix any problems with registration like resetting passwords, modifying their progress setting, and examining their activity history.
The site was built from the ground up using ASP.NET / C# and connected to a SQL Server 2000 database server.
The site is no longer active as the Department of Homeland Security is currently pursuing an alternative program. The law requiring all CDL holders in Georgia was also repealed in early 2008.
