Developing Interactive CBTs in Half the Time Kevin A. Siegel IconLogic, Inc. | with Adobe Captivate 2

What is Captivate?  Adobe Captivate is a CBT authoring tool  Software Simulations  Soft skills Training Courses  While recording your Captivate movies in automatic mode, you have a few recording options including:  Demonstration  Assessment Simulation  Training Simulation

Ideal System Settings  Screen Resolution: 1024 x 768  Capture Area: 800x600  Desktop Theme: Windows Standard  Active Title Bars: One color  Captions: Fade-In Only  One caption per slide  Click Boxes/Buttons: Go to next slide, NOT Continue

Ideal System Settings  Turn off Auto Size Captions  Turn off Calculate Caption Timing  Turn off Full Motion Recording  Frame Rate: 20 fps works great (Default is 30)  Check List for Creating Movies: OffSheet.pdf OffSheet.pdf  IconLogic eLearning Resources:

Demonstration Mode  The most popular--easiest type of movie to create  Goal is to show a concept without requiring user interaction  Start Captivate, step-through the lesson and Captivate creates the movie for you  Includes captions, mouse movements, and highlight boxes  Average Development Time: 10 hours

Assessment Simulation  Intended to gauge how well the demonstration movie worked  Requires 100% user interaction  By default, does NOT contain captions or mouse movement  Does contain Click Boxes (hotspots) and Failure Captions  Average Development Time: 10 hours  Cumulative Time: 20 hours

Training Simulation  Identical to Assessment Simulation except:  Includes Hint Captions (ideal for users who tend to point to areas of the screen but do not click)  Average Development Time: 10 hours  Net Result: 3 Movies that Re-enforce Training Concepts (but only 1 recorded concept)  Cumulative Time: 30 hours

Demonstration or Assessment?  Which type of movie will result in the most effective learning experience for your users?  Neither! Both are flawed and here's why:  Pure demonstration CBTs do not allow for user interaction--level of learning is minimized  Captions are written in the active force, but experience is passive  Pure assessment movies can be worse. No instructions telling the user what to do or what to expect

The Answer: Pure Simulation via Custom (Hybrid) Movies  Combines Demonstration Movie with Assessment Movie  Captions written in the active voice and interaction is active  Average Development Time: 10 hours (You will save hours in development time.)

Create a Custom Movie 1.In Captivate, choose Options > Recording Options 2.On the Recording Options tab, ensure Enable auto recording is selected 3.Select Demonstration from the Recording mode pick list 4.Click the Edit settings button 5.Remove the check mark from Show Mouse (The simulation is supposed to feel like the user is using the software. Removing the simulated mouse will enhance the realism.)

Create a Custom Movie 6.Select Automatically Add Text captions (to ensure Captivate automatically adds the captions for you) 7.Select Click boxes for mouse clicks and then Failure captions (so that learners who click in the wrong place see a message telling them what they should have done) 8.Click OK

Create a Custom Movie The perfect settings…

Convert a Demonstration Movie into a Simulation  Open a finished/approved Demonstration and Save with a new name  Hide the Mouse  Insert a Click Boxes with Go To Next Action  Insert a Text Entry Boxes as Appropriate  If multiple fields, include Text Entry Boxes for the First Few and then include a Complete All Button

Best Slide Practices  Hide objects to avoid accidental editing/deleting  Limit one caption per slide  Easier Editing  Faster Production  Break audio clips into small chunks  Mate audio clips to captions  Insert audio clips into slide background

Round Trip: Captivate to Word  Open a Captivate project and add the captions and closed captions  Choose File > Import/Export > Export project captions and closed captions The Open dialog box appears.  Name the resulting document and specify a save destination  Click Save

Round Trip: Captivate to Word  The captions will open in a Word table. There will be five columns  Slide ID  Item ID  Original Text Caption Data  Updated Text Caption Data and Slide.  Make necessary content and font changes to the Updated Text Caption Data  Save and close the Word document

Round Trip: Word to Captivate  Back in Captivate, choose File > Import/Export > Import project captions and closed captions  Find and open the document you edited in Word  A dialog box will appear confirming the number of captions that were imported. And that’s that.