Welcome to CUES Director Education Center (DEC) Manual. This short manual is designed to answer basic questions and provide useful tips about how to most effectively use the resources of DEC. The topics covered include:

All About CUES Director Eduction Center Resources:

CUES Directors Education Center is an Internet Web site with a variety of resources designed especially for credit union professionals. DEC's primary resources include:

Director Education Center Courses: Courses designed especially for Internet distribution to credit union directors. The courses provide valuable Internet hyperlinks to expand the value of the course’s resources, checkpoints (i.e., end-of-chapter questions), a resource center, self test and, if necessary, hotword glossary. The courses are designed to be completed in less than two hours. However, some professionals will find the hyperlinks so valuable they may take additional time to investigate all the Internet resources available on the topic being covered.

Compliance Center:  This is our most popular information service.  Recommended by a client, the "Compliance Center" is a one-stop resource for federal financial and human resource links covering all the regulations.  You can link to our courses, library materials or external links using one easy to navigate table.

Operational Links: This feature is designed to allow professionals to find operational and professional information fast, easily, and inexpensively. The Internet provides considerable operational and professional information on topics as varied as accounting and venture capital. Need to find the latest on smart cards? Try out our Operational Links. Most of these sites are up-to-date. The Operational Links can serve as your firm's corporate library.

Resource Center: This feature includes links to many Web sites that are designed especially for directors. The purpose of the library is to make useful up-to-date information available to busy directors.

Weekly Regulatory Update: Each weekend we visit all the depository regulators to see what they have been doing.  We then provide a brief synopsis and a link to the regulatory Web page where you can get more information.

Pacesetter™: Financial Performance Reporter: This valuable resource provides credit union management and directors with an unbiased financial analysis every quarter.

Accessing the Resources:

All of DEC resources are accessible from our Web site http://www.cuesdec.org. To obtain access to the resources, a valid ID and password are used. These are available upon purchase of a subscription. Typing in the ID and password in a display such as the one below with allow you access to all the features.

To get into the course, hit the "log on" icon shown below. 

The ID and password screen will then appear.  Type in each and you will go to the course's welcome page.  When you access DEC features there are some things that can infrequently go wrong.

“My password doesn’t work.” Make sure you type it in correctly with caps and small letters.  It is case sensitive.  Also make sure you don't add a space that is not called for.  If the problem persists it can be easily solved by letting us know so we can issue a new password. This can be done over via email.

Occasionally, users operating on company networks must use a network password to send data over the Internet. If you experience difficulty using our password and you are operating on a company network, discuss the problem with your network administrator.

Using Hyperlinks Effectively:

DEC courses are especially designed to leverage the "other" resources on the Internet. Unlike textbooks, written courses, CD-Rom, or video tapes, all DEC courses recognize that the Internet is a new technology with enormous resources that are available with the click of a mouse.

CUES believes that linking is the single biggest advantage of Internet training. By allowing professionals to visit regulators, vendors, or service providers in each specialty, the professional stays abreast of the most recent product offerings, regulations, and processing requirements. Professionals can also track what the competition is doing. This advantage is available through no other training media.

Printing Out Useful Information:

Subscribers to DEC may print out courses using the browser’s print capability. Many other valuable resources can be printed out directly from the browser or downloaded in Microsoft Word™ file format, Acrobat™ pdf file format, or other file formats.

DEC allows subscribers to print out courses as long as they agree to distribute them only to employees and not outside of their organization.

Learning More Efficiently:

As one of the world’s fastest growing new technologies, the Internet is experiencing growing pains. This fast pace of change means the following:

Changing content and site addresses. Expect to encounter changes to Web site addresses, URLs, and the content on them. While DEC tests the hotlinks in its courses frequently, they can and do change at any time without notice. Therefore, you may find that content has been removed altogether or moved to another URL page. DEC will do what we can to keep up, but we can’t check every course’s links every day. If you experience a bad link, please let us know via e-mail.

Performance levels. Internet performance levels, (e.g., measured by delays, lost contact, and slow loading), depend largely on your Internet service (ISP) provider and the time of day you go online. After taking DEC courses, we think you will find that the value of being able to hyperlink to related sites on the Internet is so valuable that a good ISP is worth the extra money to get the most out of DEC courses and other Internet resources.

What you see. What you see on your screen is partly controlled by the browser you use. Netscape™ and Microsoft Internet Explorer™ are the most common. PAll Netscape and Microsoft browsers are not the same. Since the vaste majority of DEC users use Explorer™ we have designed this site to display best on that browser.

The size of the monitor you use also determines what you see. If you are working on a small 14-inch monitor, you will find it harder to read the material. You may find you are better off printing out the course material you need.

Acrobat™ pdf files. It is worthwhile downloading the free Acrobat Reader™, which allows you to download and read pdf files that are used by many sites for downloading longer documents. You can now download the reader free from the Internet by clicking on the following symbol:

Achieving the Most from DEC:

DEC plans to grow rapidly in the years ahead. Internet training is new, but many experts believe it will grow to dominate corporate training in the years ahead. We want you to help us determine the direction of that growth. Tell us what you want in terms of courses and features. This will determine the direction we go and the investments we make.

DEC expects to be a leader in development of training for financial professionals. As the Internet matures, DEC plans to upgrade courses to include more features, interactivity, and multimedia.

Computer-based training (CBT) is already a significant feature of corporate training. Most of that training, however, is delivered using CD-Rom and computer disk. A 1997 survey of CBT professionals by the publisher of CBT Solutions magazine indicates that 71% of those surveyed expect to use the Internet to deliver training in the years immediately ahead. Using CUES Director Education Center, you will be part of that future.

© 2003 Credit Union Executive Society, all rights reserved