The Adobe Captivate Blog

Certificate program for Captivate 4 and other opportunities at DevLearn

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:31:26 +0530

If you are planning to attend DevLearn next month, there is a great opportunity to brush up your knowledge of Captivate 4. Joe Ganci, our advisory board member is conducting a certificate program on ‘creating outstanding eLearning with Adobe Captivate’. The session is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov 10th. This year, the Captivate QE managers will be assisting Joe during this course. This session is packed with exercises and you will learn:

In this session, you will learn:

The new features of Captivate v4
How to create interactive software simulations
How to create a soft-skills simulation
How to make use of audio and video elements
How to create interactive elements
How to set up quizzes
How to properly select publishing options

In addition to this certificate program, there are two other concurrent sessions which provide you an opportunity to learn Captivate and eLearning suite. Kevin Siegel, the author of the popular Captivate 4 book, will be conducting a class on ‘Convergence of eLearning and online training- effective tools’ and if you are interested in the complete eLearning Suite, you will want to check out Steve Howard’s session on ‘Adobe eLearning Suite- a whistle stop tour’. In Steve’s session you will learn about the tools in the eLearning Suite, how they integrate with each other, and how to leverage some of the great new features for e-Learning and performance support. In the coming days I will post more info on our plans at DevLearn, and some of the sessions the Adobe team is conducting.

devlearn,captivate training,elearning suite training

New in Captivate Exchange

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:44:51 +0530

Captivate 4 has several avenues for possible extensions- especially given the new widgets and variables features. Captivate, like many of the other Adobe products, has an exchange where third parties can share product extensions and other assets that the larger Captivate community might find useful. While the exchange has been dormant for a while, a new set of content has been introduced on exchange this month. The new content on exchange ranges from widgets to stock animations- each of which you will find useful in enhancing the projects you create using Captivate. Most of the content on exchange is free. Even the ones you need to purchase are great value for money- given that it will allow you to differentiate your Captivate projects from the others, or achieve that special task that your customer wants executed in just this specific manner. Some of the new stuff on exchange I like are:

Also, if there are assets or extensions that you would like to share with or sell to the community, please submit them on exchange.

captivate exchange,captivate 4,captivate widgets,captivate stock assets

Webinar: Captivate + Connect Pro

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:32:11 +0530

We have a new Captivate webinar coming up on Wednesday, October 21st, and we have a new speaker in Rick Zanotti. Rick has been creating eLearning content for decades and is an old hand at Captivate. He was one of the original consultants Macromedia tapped during the Robodemo days. Also, Rick is a hardcore practitioner and runs his own eLearning development firm out of Camarillo, California. A community expert, he runs a popular podcast on Captivate, and has a wealth of best practices and tips and tricks that will surely aid you in your eLearning development.

In this session titled ‘Interactivity in Virtual Classrooms: Adobe Captivate and Acrobat Connect Pro’ you will learn how to easily create interactive learning content, from engaging demonstrations to interactive simulations and quizzes, and how to deploy and track in a virtual classroom. Rick will also review the latest features and benefits of Adobe Captivate, show you how to interact with simulation and game examples directly in the Acrobat Connect Pro virtual classroom, and teach you the integration points between Adobe Captivate and Connect Pro

If you deliver courses or training via virtual classrooms, or create asynchronous eLearning content using Adobe Captivate then this session is for you. Follow this link to register for the webinar.

captivate webinar,captivate and connect pro,connect pro

Adobe Learning Summit- are you attending?

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:34:35 +0530

This year’s edition of the Adobe Learning Summit (ALS) is scheduled for November 9th at the San Jose Fairmont. It is collocated with DevLearn. This year ALS is going to be bigger and more exciting than ever. In many ways ALS is turning into MAX for eLearning. This is where we show some of the first sneak peeks of upcoming versions of our eLearning products. Those who attended last year will remember RJ’s session where he unveiled Adobe Captivate 4 and the announcement of our plans for an Adobe eLearning Suite. You should expect more of this at this year’s ALS. OK, let me let you in on one such plan- ALS attendees will get a first look at the Captivate Mac beta! We will also demonstrate some of the snazzy ideas our engineers are working on, that really don’t have a release schedule - but are just great ideas that we would like your feedback on. In addition to Captivate and eLearning Suite you will also see Presenter, Connect Pro and Flash.

We have Clay Shirky (the guru on social and economic effects of internet technologies) providing the opening keynote. Adobe’s increased focus on eLearning is underlined by the fact that this year, none other than Shantanu Narayen, our CEO, will be delivering the inaugural address.

You can register for the conference here. The Product Management team will also conduct deep dive sessions on Captivate and eLearning Suite on the sidelines of this conference. If you wish to participate in these sessions, please drop me an email.

adobe learning summit,captivate,shantanu narayen,clay shirky,adobe elearning suite

Webinar on the benefits of Adobe eLearning Suite

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:33:45 +0530

RJ, our eLearning evangelist (and twitter maniac :-)) will be doing a webinar on the benefits of Adobe eLearning suite for Adobe Captivate users. The session is scheduled for 9/30/2009, 10am Pacific Time, and will run 90 minutes. Please follow this link to register for this webinar. In this session you will learn about:

Using Adobe Soundbooth for recording and editing pristine audio for inclusion in Adobe Captivate projects
Leveraging the power of Adobe Flash for supplementing Adobe Captivate projects with animations, as well as for creating and customizing existing Flash Widgets
Designing in Adobe Photoshop for including high-impact layered images in Adobe Captivate projects
Using the Emulator in Device Central for testing mobile learning projects developed in Adobe Captivate
Supplementing informational-based eLearning in Adobe Presenter with Adobe Captivate content
Expand your eLearning delivery options using Adobe Acrobat and Dreamweaver

As I've said before, RJ's sessions are always very informative and fun, and they do fill up very fast considering his fan following. Do try and log in early. Those who missed RJ's earlier sessions, can find the recordings of the same here.

RJ Jacquez,adobe elearning suite webinar,adobe captivate

My first podcast interview

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:19:49 +0530

Well here’s something I did for the first time. My very first podcast interview! This has been posted on Captivating, Rick Zanotti’s popular podcast series. This was my first time in a sound recording studio. Rick has an impressive set-up consisting of shot-gun microphones, condenser microphones, large diaphragm microphones and tubes condensers and on and on... each piece mapped to a certain voice type or requirement. Not to mention the array of sound editing software used. I was impressed with the effort that goes into recording good audio for eLearning (I always thought that people plugged in a USB mic to their laptop and recorded the voiceover audio :)). I can now imagine the heartburn our Cp4 audio bug caused before it was patched!

In this 14 min interview we’ve discussed topics ranging from the Captivate 4 features, to our key focus areas, and some of the plans for the coming year. I hope you find this interesting.

...Pictures came and broke your heart, put the blame on VTR; You are a ... ;-)

captivate podcast

Widgets to streamline your quiz worflow

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:17:30 +0530

Usecase: Say you need to administer a quiz, where the learner has to answer all the questions in the quiz in sequence (he is not provided the option to skip). Also, at the end of the quiz, he should be provided an option to review the quiz.

To achieve this, you would go to project>skin editor and uncheck ‘show playback control’. But the user is still presented with the ‘skip’ button during the Quiz. Now, if you decide to uncheck the ‘show skip button’, the user will no longer have any means to navigate during review. Also, during review, he is needlessly shown the ‘clear’ and ‘submit’ buttons, adding to the clutter.

For the best experience, you should be able to hide the ‘skip’ button during Quiz presentation, and hide the ‘submit’ and ‘clear’ buttons during review. Now Vikram has created a couple of Captivate widgets that will help you achieve this.

To use this, copy them to your widgets folder (program files, adobe, adobe captivate, gallery, widgets); insert the widgets on the first question slide or the first slide of the project and in options set it to display for the rest of project.

Under edit> preferences>quiz>settings: uncheck ‘allow backward movement’. And that’s it- you don’t have to make any changes in the question slide options (leave the clear and skip button checked).

Do remember that these are AS3 widgets and should be used in AS3 projects (go to edit> preferences>project>publish settings>select AS3).

Widget: Hide Skip

Widget: Hide Submit and Clear

captivate quiz,hide skip button,captivate widget

extend google map widget, make it interactive

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:20:11 +0530

Adobe Captivate supports three kinds of objects. Static , Interactive and Question. Static objects inside Captivate are Text captions, animation, highlight box. Difference between static and interactive objects are that latter allows user to interact which means that when on slide it should pause the slide. It has success, failure and hint captions associated with it which are shown in corresponding cases. And lastly it can participate in scoring of the course. An example of interactive object in captivate would be a button or click box.

It has been long time I have written about using google maps API inside Adobe Captivate widgets. Look at the widget created in the post. Try the widget here. BTW the place in the widget was top view of "Statue of Liberty" - Lat - 40.6894 Long - -74.0447. But you know that this widget had something missing as you would have to insert a button on the slide to pause and let user do something. Why not it should stop by its own. What would it need to let widget pause the slide and behave like a interactive object. The answer is interactive widgets.

And what would it need to change our static widget to interactive widgets. You can read the finer details here and below are bare minimum steps needed -

Step 1 - you would change the API isStatic() to isInteractive(). This tells Captivate that the widget is interactive and gives you all the additional functionality. Doing this step alone will pause the captivate slide and give you the following dialog.

Below option lets you choose the default captions associated with interactive objects.

And should it be included in quizzing.

As you can see there are more options available to you and its very similar to a button or a click box.

Step 2 - Define a variable interactiveWidget_mc which is used to talk to captivate movies.

Step 3 - Define three functions setFailure, setSuccess, setShowHint. The widget developer has to decide when to send success event. In my case I will pass success event when user has clicked on the widget. I will set up a event listener for mouse clicks and when user has clicked I will call setSuccess.

function Release(event:MouseEvent):void{

setSuccess();

}

this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, Release);

I will leave other funtions for you to try out.

See these in action. Click here or the image below to download the Captivate movie.

Source files discussed in this post -

Source file for widget(.FLA file) - Download
Widget file which can be used in Adobe Captivate 4(.swf file) - Download

Do let us know what other things you tried to enhance it.

google map api,adobe captivate widgets,interactivity in elearning

get the file size you want ...

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:33:06 +0530

File size could be an important consideration in creating eLearning contents especially in cases when it has to be put on websites or blogs. I was going through few discussions on web about file sizes best practices in Adobe Captivate. There are many things which you could do to reduce the file size. Most of them revolves around the quality of the assets inside the courses. The higher the quality – higher the file size.

If trying out the best practices is too cumbersome for you here is something from under the hood -

Go to “Publish” dialog.

Click on the hyperlink. It will be “custom” by default. You will get following dialog –

Play with the file size slider to get the result you want. This can also be used to create different size/quality content for different audiences. For web it could be of low size - low quality. For others cases it could be high quality - more size.

adobe captivate file size

eLearning in higher ed

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:46:44 +0530

Results from a comprehensive study conducted by APLU (Association of Public and Land-grant Universities) show that eLearning is growing rapidly in the universities. Key statistics from the survey:

“During the past decade, online learning has begun to weave into the fabric of higher education and has become the fastest growing segment,” said Peter McPherson, president of Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (A۰P۰L۰U). “All indications are that this growth will continue”

Between 21% to 28% of all faculty are currently teaching online courses (staff strength 645,000).
Around 33% of all faculty have developed an online course (10% currently developing)
Nearly 64% of faculty said it takes “somewhat more” or “a lot more” effort to teach an online course compared to a face-to-face course. The results for online course development are even more striking, where more than 85% of all faculty with online course development experience said it takes “somewhat more” or “a lot more” effort.
While technology for online delivery is considered above avg; it is incentives for online content development and delivery which are below avg. considering the extra effort involved in creating and delivering this content, this could be an issue.
Around 70% of faculty believe that the learning outcomes of online learning are inferior to F2F. But, only 48% of faculty who’ve developed or delivered an online course believe that online eLearning outcomes are inferior

You can read the entire report here

APLU,online learning in higher education

Captivate variables - how to access and control them from external movies..

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:12:08 +0530

Adobe Captivate 4 has a feature using which you can access and control captivate movies from external movies. You can find more details here.

Here is how you access Adobe Captivate movie variables from external swf:

Action Script 3:
root.<variable_name>
Ex: root.rdinfoCurrentSlide, root.cpInfoAuthor

Action Script 2:
_root.<variable_name>
Ex: _root.rdinfoCurrentSlide, _root.cpInfoAuthor

Note : Few of the variables in Captivate AS2 movie are defined inside movie class. Hence cannot be accessed directly with _root. In these cases _root.movie.<variable_name> is the correct way to access variables defined inside rdmovie class. As a general rule, for AS2 to access a variable we should first try access it using _root.<variable_name>, if that comes undefined, then access using _root.movie.<variable_name>.

Variables that are defined inside the movie class are: cpInfoCurrentDateString, cpInfoCurrentDate, cpInfoCurrentMonth, cpInfoCurrentYear, cpInfoCurrentDay, cpInfoCurrentTime, cpInfoCurrentHour, cpInfoCurrentMinutes, cpInfoEpochMS, cpCmndVolume, cpInfoElapsedTimeMS, rdcmndGotoSlide, cpCmndGotoFrameAndResume, rdcmndNext, rdcmndPlaybarMoved, rdcmndMute, rdcmndCC, rdisMainMovie, cpInfoCurrentSlide, cpInfoCurrentSlideType

Blog post by - Deepak R, Adobe Captivate

captivate variables,access

Open letter to our customers on the recent Customer Support issues

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:05:41 +0530

In the recent past, there have been increasing incidences of dissatisfaction with Adobe's customer support. I've personally tracked and escalated some of this chatter from forums like Twitter and Facebook (Ellen, we heard you :)). Below is an open letter, from Adobe's VP for Tech Support- Lambert Walsh, on what is being done to address this situation.

Captivate customer support,adobe customer support,lambert walsh

What are we assessing?

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:02:26 +0530

learning

In old computer terminology we used the phrase "garbage in and garbage out". Our school and learning systems have unwittingly added a third element - "garbage tracked".

Calvin in another strip comments, that it is no point going to school as he never learns anything there that he wants to learn. As I reflect back to my schooling days, I can hardly recollect a class in a new semester (or terms as we call them in India) starting off where the teacher explained why spending my quality time with him over the next 3 months is worthwhile to ME.

There was the false assumption that I somehow knew why I was appearing for a class. Sure in college that was sometimes the case, but there was often a realization in the middle of the semester that there is a mismatch in expectation and reality.

So without a clear understanding of why the year 1620 (in the above cartoon) was important, how many students are simply going through the system manipulating the system?

Conditional statments in Advanced Actions..the stint continues...!

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:21:30 +0530

learning,e-learning,advanced actions,conditional statments,captivate,quiz

You are creating a quiz in your e-learning project in Adobe Captivate. You intend to grant grades(such as A, B,C) to students based on the percentage scored by a student out of total score.

This was the use-case I had thrown in my last post. In my last post you learnt how to create an advanced action and add assignment & standard action statments to an advanced action. If you are still wondering as in how to implement above use-case using assignment and standard actions only, then well let me tell you that you would not be alone. You cannot implement the above use-case by just using assignment and standard actions. You would need something more. You need conditional statements in your advanced action. And this post aims to help you with that.

In this post I would show you as to how the above use-case can be achieved comprehensively using advanced actions.

Follow the following steps to achieve this use-case;

Create three user-variables:
1. Total - to store the total marks in a quiz.
2. Scored - to store the actual marks scored by a student taking the quiz.
3. Result - to store the final percentage.
4. Grade – to store the final grade obtained by the student. This post tells you how to create user variables in Adobe Captivate.
Create an Advanced action: sc1.

After storing the relevant values in appropriate variables, calculate the percentage of marks scored by the student. That would look like : (Scored/Total) X 100.

So your ‘Result’ variable stores the percentage of marks scored by a student. Now you need to assign different grades based on the percentage of marks scored by the student. Say:

Grade A - %age > 80

Grade B – 60< %age <=80

Grade C - %age <=60.

After adding condition to check if the percentage is greater than 80, you need to add new conditions to assign Grade B and Grade C. Remember that you cannot include a condition statement inside a condition statement.

Now in order to assign Grade B, you need to check whether the percentage lies between 60% and 80%. For this we would need an ‘AND’ operation.

After you have your advanced action in place, you could execute this advanced action on the Slide enter action of any slide(after the quiz results slide) which displays the variable grade(say in a text caption).

Hope by now, you would have got a good understanding of variables and advanced actions. All the ground work for variables and advanced actions is done by this post…..so you should be ready to fly now. If you have any queries do drop me a line… Cheers!!

Key update for Adobe Presenter

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:08:07 +0530

Adobe Presenter, one of the key rapid authoring tools in the Adobe eLearning suite, will be releasing an important product update in the next few weeks. Paresh Kharya, the PM for Adobe Presenter, has covered some of the key highlights of this release in his post on the Connect User Forum.

Couple of key feature enhancements that I’m very excited about in this update are:

Improved PowerPoint Conversion and PPTX format support: This update would include support for various PowerPoint SmartArt Animations. It would now be possible to work with and synchronize PowerPoint SmartArt animations. This release would include enhancements for improving the flash conversion fidelity of embedded images in PowerPoint. The release would also enhance the conversion fidelity for various text and shape effects created in PPTX format. Resolved issues where alternative text inserted using PowerPoint was not being exposed to screen readers. Based on what I’ve seen, the PPT conversion capability with this update will whip the other presenters out there.
Tighter integration of Captivate Content in Presenter: We have enhanced the support for embedding Captivate created flash content in Presenter presentations. Captivate content having full motion recordings would now play properly without the need to manually copy the Captivate output files to Presenter data folder. We have also fixed issues related to loss of display fidelity when Captivate content would sometimes get imported with incorrect dimensions.

adobe presenter,adobe elearning suite,powerpoint to swf conversion