Adobe Captivate 4,E-Learning,SCORM Packager

A new addition to Captivate 4 is a separate application called SCORM Packager. It can be used to combine multiple Captivate SCOs, Flash Created swfs, Presenter quiz, Course builder quizzes into a single multi-sco SCORM package (zip). It extends Captivate’s capability of creating a SCORM enabled package by allowing user to combine these packages. This application will be useful when SCORM complaint courses created by different users have to be clubbed together into a single package.

The SCORM Packager can combine

• Captivate projects output (.zip files when you publish a captivate project for SCORM)
• Flash Learning Interaction files (.swf files which use LMS Adapter for tracking)
• Presenter created Quiz
• Coursebuilder quiz (converted into scorm package)
• Combination of the above files

Perform following steps, in order to add Captivate SCOs to a SCORM package:

1. Launch SCORM packager, add Course manifest details

The Course Manifest details include the following information:

-SCORM version (1.2 and 2004)

-course details like Identifier, Title, Description, Version, Duration and Subject

One the course Identifier and Title are mandatory whereas the rest is optional.

2. Click Add module – Select the SCO (zip file) that you have created using Captivate 4

3. Add sco details in the form when prompted.

Each SCO- identifier should be unique for each course/sco and the final course should have corresponding entry in the imsmanifest.xml file.

4. Publish the final package

The packaged zip contains resource files of each SCO contained in individual folders and xsd and imsmanifest at the root level.

Please note that if the structure of any of the SCOs is changed i.e. the location of xsd or imsmanifest files is changed, the packager will not work as intended.

The version of SCORM should be same for all courses that are to be integrated into a single package. However, the version of Action Script for the SCOs need not be same.

The packaged zip file can be uploaded on any LMS and the individual courses can be taken by user.

 

Flash Learning Interactions

Flash learning interactions are available with new Elearning Suite. These are Flash components for commonly used interaction types such as multiple choice, True / false etc. The best way to use these interactions is using quiz templates which has sample interactions used and are configurable. You can create a quiz pretty fast using these templates.

LMS Adapter is an integral part of these Quiz templates, which enables these templates to track user progress. Quiz templates are SCORM enabled and uses LMS Adapter to communicate with LMS. Once you create a quiz using this template it is pretty simple to add it as a sco in SCORM packager.

Perform following steps, in order to add a Quiz template based quiz to a SCORM package:

• Launch SCORM packager, add Course manifest details
• Click Add module – Select the swf file you created using quiz template
• Add sco details in the form

And this is very much it.

You are now ready to publish this package for the SCORM version you selected. Also, LMS Adapter enables quiz template based quizzes to choose the SCORM version at runtime. This means that for these swf files, you need not worry about the version you are publishing for. It can be either SCORM 1.2 or 2004.

 

 

 

Combining SCORM packages created Using Different Tools

It is very easy to combine SCORM packages, created using different tools. For the above mentioned supported formats, you can either add a zip file or a swf (learning Interaction swf) to create a multisco package out of it.

In case of Learning Interaction the sco details need to be provided, while adding the sco. For ready scorm packages sco details are extracted from the imsmanifest.xml, available in the package. After adding all the scos the final package is just one click away.

Posted by Auromita Bhadra at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Adobe Captivate 4,Text To Speech,rapid eLearning

'Text to Speech' functionality of Adobe Captivate 4

Adobe Captivate 4 has just been released and special attention has been provided to various audio workflows in the product. The headlight audio feature that has been added is the 'Text to Speech' (T2S) engine. As the name suggests, Adobe Captivate 4 allows you to convert your text to professional quality voice-over narration. Users need to install the ‘Text to speech’ utility- available in the DVD or for download from the Captivate website.
So where does one find the T2S functionality in Adobe Captivate 4? Well, it comes as a part of 'Slide Notes' panel and converts your slide notes to audio at the click of a button.
T2S allows you to add professional voice-over-narration to your project by simply marking the text in your slide notes panel for 'Text to speech’ and then converting the same to an audio file. Adobe Captivate provides two voices, a female voice in the form of 'Kate' and a male voice in the form of 'Paul', using which you can either have a female or a male voice-over narration  added to your Adobe Captivate project.

Let’s see this example.

As shown in the movie, once you mark the text in the slide notes, the slide notes panel, should look something like this:

 

 

Clicking on ‘convert to speech’ will bring up the Speech Agent selection dialog called 'Speech Setting'. Select the male or the female voice and convert the text to Speech.

Also, it’s very simple to modify the speech. Just modify the text in the slide notes panel and hit ‘convert to speech’ once again. Modified speech files will be created.

Posted by Mukul Vinay Lele at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (50)

Right-Click,Adobe Captivate 4,eLearning,Quizzing,SCORM,ClickBox

Requests to provide the right-click functionality in Adobe Captivate have been a long standing one. The Flash player prevents the access of the right-click and uses it for its purposes. This prevents people from creating simulations of those scenarios where the application being captured required a right-click very commonly used in context-sensitive popup menus.There have been many workarounds on implementing the Right-Click functionality in Adobe Captivate over the years, some of which are listed below:

 

workaround 1    workaround2    workarouund3

 

Now you do not need to use these workarounds any more, Adobe Captivate 4, makes this possible out of the box. All you have to do is insert a click  box,  go to  clickbox's properties->Options->right mouse click

 

 

 

and now this click box will accept right click while movie is playing and perform the action whatever you have asked for. That’s not all, if you were capturing a movie in assessment mode, it would automatically generate, a Right-Click Box for every right-click done during capture.

 

Here is one small demo which shows how would your right-click movie look like.
Points to remembering while working with Right-Click in Captivate 4:

 

1. Security Setting:   Ensure that the SWF you published is  in Flash Player's trusted path. If you are publishing to default folder (%My Document%\My Adobe Captivate Project) then you do not need worry about security settings as captivate automatically adds that path into trusted path of flash player.
2. Disable accessibility: In order to make Right-click work you will need to disable Accessibility from Adobe Captivate 4-> Preferences->Project->Publish settings->Enable Accessibility
3. Right-Click will not work in stand-alone SWF file.
4. PDF and AVI publish: Right-Click doesn’t work in PDF and AVI publish.
5. EXE publish: Right-Click work for AS2 EXE publish but not for AS3 EXE publish
6. Preview (F4/F8/F10):  Right-Click work for AS2 movies but not for AS3  movies
7. Preview (F12, in Web Browser): Right-Click works for both AS2 & AS3.
8. SWF Publish (the standard one) : Works for both AS2 and AS3.
9. Flash Player Version: Right Click Doesn’t work for movie published Flash Player versions earlier than 8.0

 

Posted by Arif Ali Saiyed at 2:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

rapid eLearning,authoring,scripting-free elearning development

Adobe® Captivate® 4 software is packed with new features that help you work faster, collaborate more effectively, and create more realistic and engaging eLearning content with advanced interactivity, software and scenario simulations, quizzes, tables of contents, widgets, and more—all without programming or multimedia skills.

Here are the top new features of Adobe Captivate 4 addressing the release goals mentioned above:

Productivity, Richness, and Robustness

Round-trip PowerPoint workflow

Leverage existing Microsoft® PowerPoint® 2007 (PPTX format) slides in your projects.

Import slides with audio and interactivity, and easily update the imported content from Adobe Captivate, keeping your PowerPoint and Adobe Captivate files in sync. 

The editing of PowerPoint slides in Captivate uses the same interface as the PowerPoint application, lowering the learning curve for new users.

Files are imported as an embedded content as well as a link.

Variables and Advanced Actions

Use Variables to personalize the learning experience by using learner-provided data, such as the learner’s name, throughout a scenario. The system comes with a large set of system variables, and the user is allowed to define any number of user-requested variables.

Use Advanced Actions to further configure and modify the experience by enabling conditional actions, or more than one action in an interaction. 

Text-to-speech functionality

Keep learners tuned in to your content thanks to automatic voice-over functionality that turns text to high-quality speech.

Scratch audio is often incorporated in various stages of the content review process. Modification of this audio as a result of the review is time-consuming and costly. The text-to-speech functionality reduces the effort to retyping the text.

For most content we believe that the quality of the audio is good enough for final delivery, thereby significantly eliminating an important cost/time component from the authoring workflow.

Customizable widgets

Advanced content authors may feel the need to extend the capabilities of Captivate.

Create more compelling learning experiences by including widgets such as games, question types, and more. Create widgets in Adobe Flash® Professional software, easily share them via Adobe Exchange®, and customize them to meet your content needs.

These widgets once created can be used in other projects within the organization. We also expect that over time, people would start to share their widgets either in the paid/freeware/open source model.

Adobe Photoshop layer support

Preserve layers in imported Adobe® Photoshop® (PSD) files.

When you import a PSD file, the layers are imported separately, allowing the graphic designer to easily edit or manipulate individual layers.

Table of Contents and Aggregator

Enable learners to easily navigate through content and track their progress with a multilevel Table of Contents.

Use the Aggregator to combine multiple Captivate content modules to create a complete eLearning course. This allows for modular as well as collaborative development methodologies.

Streamlined workflows and enhanced usability

Use workflow and usability enhancements, including inline editing of text captions, templates to standardize the look and feel of projects, panning to optimize viewing on small screens and devices, support for right-clicking in simulations, drawing tools and image editing, and improved accessibility features.

Expanded output options

Adobe Captivate 4 will allow for publishing to a PDF as well as AVI as well as Adobe® ActionScript® 3.0 in addition to the publish to SWF and Adobe® ActionScript® 2.0

Adobe PDF is fast becoming the default platform for information exchange.  Insertion of Adobe Captivate movies in Adobe PDF files enlivens text-based instructional content.

Expansion of Adobe Captivate’s user base which demands high-fidelity non-interactive content drives the need to deliver the content in AVI format.  The AVI files for streaming on the web, distributing on CD/DVDs or publishing to YouTube™.

You can now embed your movies in Adobe® Flex® content using Adobe® ActionScript® 3.0 publishing.

Improving Efficiency of the ID-SE interaction

SWF commenting

Accelerate content creation cycles with real-time reviews in Adobe Captivate Reviewer, an Adobe AIR™ application.

Reviewers can add comments to your SWF files while playing them without

 having Adobe Captivate installed, and comments will be imported to the appropriate slides in your project.

Comments from multiple reviewers’ would be automatically sync-ed by Captivate, which allows for the author to review all the reviews at once.

Project templates

Use enhanced project templates that make it easy for subject-matter experts to contribute instructionally sound content without compromising structure.

Round-trip PowerPoint workflow

eLearning authoring workflows often start with PowerPoint. This feature significantly improves the “getting-out-of-the-block” time, as well as reduces content “data-entry” timeframes.

Already detailed above.

Listening to our customers

Single SWF Output

Previous versions of Adobe® Captivate® generated outputs which were spread across multiple SWF files. This prevented easy uploading, embedding and sharing of Captivate content. There were some customers who preferred to have it this way, but a large percentage of customers would prefer to be given a choice as to whether they wanted one SWF file or have multiple SWF files.

Adobe Captivate 4 delivers on this specific request. By default, Adobe captivate 4 will try and generate a single SWF file in almost all cases.

There are a few exceptions. Multiple SWFs are generated when Flash Video content is embedded or if SWF animations of mixed Flash/ActionScript versions are used in the project. Question Pools are always kept outside the main SWF by design.

If the user chooses to use multiple SWF option that is also available as in the previous versions.

Right-Click Functionality

Applications which needed to capture right-click functionality had to use various work around to provide this, as Flash player used to capture this keyboard action.

In Adobe Captivate 4 , projects published using Adobe® ActionScript® 2.0 will be able to have access to right-click functionality, provided we turn off the accessibility option of the content.  Similarly, for projects using Adobe® ActionScript® 3.0 this functionality is available only for content being played in the browser, and not in standalone application.

Panning while screen recordings

Automatic and manual panning of the capture window while screen recording is taking place has been a long standing request from the user community.

In Adobe Captivate 4 provides this functionality, where not only are these options provided, but capability to switch between these options through shortcut keys are possible during recording.

Performance and Robustness

As rapid eLearning gains traction and as more complex and larger projects are managed and authored using rapid technologies, it is important that authoring tools also provide scalability in performance and robustness.

Users of Adobe Captivate 4 will be surprised by the significant improvement made in some common workflows and the ability to author and manage large modular projects.

Care has also been taken to improve output fidelity to address the needs of authoring of some professional courses.

Posted by Tridib Roy Chowdhury at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Adobe captivate,rapid eLearning,ID,SME

Delivering productivity through rapid authoring of complete, complex and rich content

Organizations are increasingly looking at rapid development methodologies which can deliver quality eLearning content in days/weeks instead of months, at a fraction of the cost.

Adobe® Captivate® 4 is designed to allow organizations to dramatically increase the percentage of courses that can be developed using rapid methodologies.

Rapid authoring is taken beyond application simulation and screen capture to allow for the creation of complete end-to-end coursework which can include complex interaction, conditional branching, quizzing, personalization and rich media.

Adobe® Captivate® 4 continues to democratize the authoring space by ensuring lack of scripting/multi-media knowledge does not dampen the need to create quality eLearning content.

To satisfy the needs of advanced authors, product extensibility is introduced in Adobe® Captivate® 4.  Well-defined extensions also opens the window of content reuse across projects; and across authors within and outside the organization.

Improving the efficiency of the ID-SME interaction

Learning and Development departments seldom work in isolation in the creation of eLearning content. The Instructional Designers (IDs) and other learning professionals need to necessarily engage with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) during various stages of the authoring workflow. These SMEs could be within the organization or within the customer organizations. The workflow between these two is essential but highly inefficient.  

Learning and development (L&D) departments within a organization are also exploring ways to use their learning resources effectively, by “outsourcing” the content authoring to the SMEs which will allow them to use their primary skill sets in defining instruction structure and learning objectives of a course.

Adobe® Captivate® 4 offers L&D departments multiple tools to improve the efficiency of this interaction. These tools can be used in isolation or together.  The exact mix of the final solution that will be used by a specific department is left to that department.

Posted by Tridib Roy Chowdhury at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe eLearning Suite,Adobe Captivate 4,Rapid eLearning

Today we announced the launch of Captivate 4 and the new Adobe eLearning Suite. While the sneak peaks at the Adobe Learning Summit and the eLearning Guild conference last November generated significant buzz around this big release, I truly believe we have two solid products that we can be bullish about. Close to 50 engineers worked for 18 months to build this product. This was beta tested for close to a year by more than 700 of your peers in the eLearning community.

The core focus of the two products is to drive productivity and efficiency in eLearning content authoring. Irrespective of wether you are involved in authoring rapid eLearning content, or comprehensive courseware, these products will meet your complete authoring needs. Captivate and Adobe Presenter form the anchor products for rapid eLearning. The integration between these products and the asset creation tools in the suite will help you generate richer eLearning content in a rapid authoring framework. Check out this video introducing the rapid authoring workflow in the eLearning Suite:

The eLearning Suite also contains enhanced versions of Flash Professional CS4 and Dreamweaver CS4- with specific eLearning extensions. These products form the anchor products for traditional courseware authoring. Shared tools like the SCORM Packager and the LMS adapter help streamline eLearning content creation using these powerful tools. Check out this video introducing the traditional authoring workflow in the eLearning suite:

For a more comprehensive introduction to the Adobe eLearning suite, check out this video RJ created.

In the next few days, to support the community in using these two products, we are converting this site to our team blog. We will discuss our personal favorites among this large set of features, and ways (not all documented) in which the community can maximize its benefits from the same. We hope this blog will provide a window for the large Captivate community to interact directly with the development team.

Posted by Shameer Ayyappan at 2:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Captivate,ASTD TechKnowledge,Learning Technologies,LearnTec

Tridib, Suresh, Jayashree and I will be at a bunch of conferences in the coming month. I will be attending ASTD TechKnowledge in Las Vegas this month. Tridib and Jayashree will be at the Learning Technologies conference in UK during the same time. And Suresh and I will be at the LearnTec conference in Germany between the Feb3rd and 5th.

At Learning Technologies, Tridib will be speaking on 'Creating and managing visually-rich and engaging training content for tomorrows learner’s'. At LearnTec I will be speaking on the topic of Rapid eLearning vs. Traditional eLearning. I'm still not sure what time the session is scheduled for, and will update that info on this blog later. While I've spoken to a bunch of our customers who have been to LearnTec before, this is my first time at this conference. I'm looking forward to it. If any of you are going to be at any of these three conferences, and would like to discuss Captivate, or eLearning in general, do drop me a line. We will be organizing breakfast sessions and post conference drinks to facilitate these. You can also drop by the Adobe booth, where we will be demonstrating some of the new exciting features in Captivate.

Posted by Shameer Ayyappan at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Captivate,Best of eLearning Award

OK, I did not stage this! When I made the post yesterday about the finalists, I had no idea that the awards were going to be announced the next day.

Adobe Captivate 3 has won the Best of eLearning! 2008 award for 'Best Simulation Tool'. Also, Adobe's Acrobat Connect Pro won the 'Best Virtual Classroom' award.

The combination should help streamline your eLearning course delivery. When the latest version of Connect Pro was released, we released a patch for Captivate (June 08) that ensures tight integration between the two products.

• In a virtual classroom, presenters can allow participants to consume and interact with the Captivate course individually, and at their own pace. When required they can hit the sync button and bring all participants to the same page.
• By default, Adobe Captivate projects are automatically published with a skin that contains an "Exit" button, which closes the window the content displays within. When loaded into a virtual classroom, this results in closing the classroom window. The exit button of a skin now deactivates smartly when loaded into Acrobat Connect Pro.
• When publishing to Acrobat Connect Pro, Adobe Captivate saves you a few mouse-clicks and automatically turns on tracking for the Connect Training server.
• Hotspot questions, a new question type introduced in Adobe Captivate 3, are now fully supported with Acrobat Connect Pro.

Sphere: Related Content

Posted by Shameer Ayyappan at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Captivate,Best of eLearning,simulation tool

The finalists in various categories for the Best of eLearning! 2008 were announced during the eLearning Summit in November 08. In one of my earlier posts I had requested our users to vote for us in three categories. I'm happy to inform you that Adobe Captivate has been selected finalist in two of these categories- Best Simulation Tool, and Best Assessment Tool! Thank you for the votes and support! You can find the complete list here.

I'm still not sure when the actual winners will be announced... will keep you posted on that. On a side note, I attended the virtual eLearning Summit today. I think it is a pretty neat concept. You can do the same, and even attend the awards session by following this link.

Posted by Shameer Ayyappan at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rapid eLearning,Traditional eLearning,Adobe Captivate,Adobe Presenter,Flash Professional

eLearning can be classified into Rapid and Traditional eLearning. The two are distinguished by multiple facets including- the intended objective, turnaround time and shelf-life. This, to a great extent determines the time and effort an author will spend on creating this content.

Rapid eLearning methodologies are best employed for projects that contain frequently updated, time-sensitive content. While the turnaround time for Rapid eLearning projects are a couple of weeks, traditional eLearning projects can take a few months to develop. Projects that require extensive simulations, or focus on soft skills or behavior modification are good candidates for traditional eLearning.

Below is a snapshot of the tools that would be used in the Rapid Authoring workflow. Adobe Captivate and Adobe Presenter would be the primary tools used to author and aggregate content.

Authors make use of pre-existing templates to create instructionaly sound content rapidly. When required, authors can leverage the asset creation tools like Photoshop and Flash Professional to enhance or customize stock content. The final content can be published using Captivate onto any SCORM or AICC compliant LMS or to Adobe Connect Pro.

A snapshot of the tools that would be used in the Traditional Authoring workflow are shown below. Flash Professional is the primary tool used for authoring and aggregating content in this scenario.

Authors can use Photoshop to edit graphics, Captivate to create assessments and capture applications, and Soundbooth to edit audio. The Flash Learning Interactions and Dreamweaver's Coursebuilder extension can be used to expedite the eLearning content creation process when working with these tools.

Posted by Shameer Ayyappan at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)