Solving technology problems, one at a time
At this time, the maximum width the template can handle is 1024px. Set your project size at 1024 x
768 or smaller.
Although Captivate has its own SCORM interface, its reliability in our LMS over the last few years has become increasingly problematic. Data gets lost, quizzes score incorrectly, or do not complete at all, and there is a lot of frustration.
At the same time, there has been increasing demand from subject matter experts and educators for inexpensive, easy to learn tools like Captivate that leverage their Powerpoint skills but have plenty of flexibility and options for interactivity. So something had to be done to make Captivate useful again.
What I decided to do was to turn over all the SCORM communication for Captivate activities to our HTML template, which doesn’t have the communication issues of the Adobe products. Using the SCORM template as a wrapper does not add a lot of work to a project, in fact, it requires only one line of code to add a scored Captivate or Presenter quiz to a template-based learning module.
Any type of scored Captivate file will work – both question slides and interactive slides. The module can handle one or more Captivate quizzes, either by themselves, or in combination with other types of content and quizzes, such as Questionmark Perception or the template-based interaction quizlets.
Continue readingIf you have a Captivate 4 file that refuses to generate any SCORM support files when publishing, check your Publish settings. Make sure that “Fullscreen” is not checked in the publishing settings. Then it will publish fine.
Since you are eliminating the Captivate generated code for maximizing the window, you may want to add that back in. To force the Captivate window to maximize to full-screen upon opening, add the following to the head of your published HTML file:
Continue readingCaptivate 5 has many bugs that have been complete showstoppers for my elearning projects. Among them, there is a problem with SCORM courses that get perpetually stuck on the gray “Loading…” screen. This is because
Continue readingScenario-based learning can teach decision-making and thinking processes. Here is an example of the “Labyrinth” scenario-based learning system created in a Scottish medical school which features low fidelity simulations created with just text and pictures – but with great effect.
Each page describes what’s going on and gives a choice of action.
Here you are a doctor doing rounds and a nurse comes in with news about a patient who is increasingly breathless. Your choice here is “Stick with the rounds” or “Ask to see the patient”
If you stick with the rounds, you start wondering if you are doing the right thing, and are soon brought back to the right track -going to see the patient.
Continue readingAdobe Captivate, Articulate and Adobe Presenter can all add annoying clicking sounds or “pops” between slides when there is narration. These clicks often are associated with either picking up the actual mouse-click used to switch slides, are added in by the application by design, or added in as an audio artifact. The solutions vary depending on the application and cause.
An instructional designer came to me with a Captivate issue the other day. She had converted a working version 3 Captivate file to version 4. The converted file no longer calculated scores properly. There was a walk-through tutorial showing how to use a new web application, then a short multiple-choice quiz with 5 questions. The setting “Show Progress” was turned on, so each question should show a label: “Question 1 of 5, Question 2 of 5, etc.”
In version 3, everything had worked fine. In version 4, things looked fine in Edit mode, but at runtime, the numbering was off. The first question was numbered “Question 2 of 7” and it would increment from there.
I immediately assumed it was counting clickboxes from somewhere else in the file, but when I looked at the Advanced Interaction page, Add to Total was grayed out for all buttons and clickboxes, and Track Score was also not checked for any of them. So, I assumed it could not be the clickboxes. Thinking it might be some corruption in the question slides, I re-created all the quiz questions, and yet the problem remained.
Continue readingOne of my colleagues wrote that she had used the right-click feature in her latest Captivate project. When she previewed the file using Preview > Project, it worked fine. But when she attempted to publish
Continue readingGood news for those who are interested in creating interactive learning content on the Mac: Adobe Captivate for Mac is in beta testing. You can volunteer to test the pre-release versions here: Prerelease Interest Form
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