Captivate – Acrobat Integration

A typical scenario for creating an elearning course with Captivate is to create multiple 5-10 min modules of Captivate movies that are integrated using the aggregator or the multi-sco packager or by creating your own navigation shell using Flash Pro. Today, I’ll show you another option that is available for creating a course with multiple modules.

The Adobe eLearning Suite integrates Adobe Captivate and Adobe Acrobat Pro to help you create a PDF portfolio containing your Captivate movies, complete with rich navigation. You can easily publish these n the web or distribute it via email. Your learners just need the free Adobe Reader on their computers to view this content. One note of caution: If your content contains assessments or significant interactivity, then this is not the best mode to publish in. 

Here’s an example of how you can achieve this. We will create an E-Learning course to teach ‘alphabets’, ‘numbers’ and ‘shapes’ to kids. So instead of creating a single Captivate project containing all the content, it will be broken down into smaller modules. Start by creating a Captivate project on ‘alphabets’ and publish it as a PDF. This option is available in the Publish dialog.

Just check the box which says ‘export PDF’ and publish the project. In the published folder, you will now get a PDF file which contains the embedded Captivate SWF.

Similarly create Captivate published movies for the other two topics. Thus you will get a separate PDF files for every topic.

Now you are just few steps away from creating your cool PDF portfolio of training modules. This can be done using Acrobat 9 Pro which is part of your Adobe eLearning Suite. In Acrobat Pro:

1. Click the Combine task button and choose Assemble PDF Portfolio. Your Acrobat window is renamed the Portfolio[#].pdf window, and is now a dedicated Portfolio interface.

Tip: If you look in the program menus, you’ll see that only those commands that are applicable to PDF Portfolio are active.

2. Click Add Files at the bottom left of the window to display the Add Files dialog. Locate and select the PDF’s you just generated using Captivate, and click Open. The dialog closes, and the selected files display in a grid at the left of the Edit window.

3. Select appearance and display options from the panes at the right of the window, including:

• Choose a layout from the Choose a Layout pane options at the right of the Portfolio window. The default uses a basic thumbnail grid.
• Click the Add Welcome & Header bar to display the Welcome Page and Header panes. Click either Welcome Page or Header options to display settings and follow the prompts to select and define the content. Click Done to close the pane and return to the Edit window.
• Click the Select a Color Scheme bar to display a palette of color schemes. Click to select or design your own.
• Click the Specify File Details bar to display the files in a list view; configure the list columns in the Details mode using the options in the Specify File Details pane

Click the Publish bar to display options for managing the PDF Portfolio. You can save, e-mail or share the Portfolio on Acrobat.com.

4. Click Save on the Portfolio toolbar and save the Portfolio file.

5. To close the Portfolio and return to Acrobat, close the Portfolio’s program window.

To know more about designing PDF portfolio, you can visit http://www.acrobatusers.com/tutorials/2008/07/building_a_pdf_portfolio

Thus your portfolio consisting of different modules is ready. User can choose any of the modules and start learning. The portfolio can look something like this. Click on any module and your Captivate movie is up and running!!

Please click here to view the PDF portfolio created for the above tutorial

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