Creating Responsive Design Interactions in Adobe Captivate 8

One challenge with Adobe Captivate is that there isn't a separate type of quiz question that is only to be used for knowledge checks. When I say knowledge checks, I mean the type of question that is there for the learner to simply test their knowledge up until that point. To me a knowledge check doesn’t interact with the course quiz in any way. This is difficult in Captivate. You can do surveys, but they don't give you the built in function for providing feedback. You can turn off the ability to have quiz questions contribute to the quiz but certain other issues arise as well. 
Probably the best way to deal with this is to create your own interactions. In this video I use advanced actions (both kinds), user variables, all within a responsive design as well.

Adding Links to the End of Your Adobe Captivate Course - More Powerful Than You Think

In this video, I show you how you can add a link at the end of your course that automatically launches if the user successfully completes the training. Ok, you might be thinking 'so what?' Well the benefit is that depending on what you link to, you can add a level of interactivity to your training. This is espesially true if you are housing your eLearning course on something other than an LMS. For example, I house samples of my work on my Dropbox account. This way I can share my eLearning designs with stakeholders and subject matter experts without having an expensive LMS. Without an LMS though, you lose the ability to track your training results. Watch the video to see several examples of how I use this to overcome this problem.

I'd Like to Try Some eLearning Time Travel

It's really amazing what we take for granted. In this video 8 Photoshop experts attempt to use Photoshop 1.0. It is clear that we just expect certain things to be there. Clearly many of the features that we use today were introduced along the way.

I'd like to try this with Adobe Captivate. Actually before Captivate was called Captivate, it was Robodemo. It would be really interesting to see how I could manage. My first version of Captivate was version 2.0. One thing I can attest to is that rapid development exists today in Captivate 8 whereas in version 2.0, I had a painstakingly slow process to develop any courseware. I think I will try to trackdown an early version of Cp and see how I manage.

Creating Custom Workpaces in Adobe Captivate

One thing that many new users of Adobe Captivate discover is that turning on various toolbars and panels isn't persistent in Captivate 8. In this video I teach fellow Instructional Designers how they can correct this and have all their favourite toolbars and panels.

Creating a Custom Quiz Results Page in Adobe Captivate 8

In this video I explain how you can add a custom quiz results page in Adobe Captivate 8. A simple thing really, but the regular results page doesn't really cut it for me. Check it out.

A New Website

Today is the first day of my new website. I have had a 9-5 for a few years now, but I have decided to return the role of professional consultant. While a brick and mortar location isn't really my style, nor within my budget, this website will become my home on the web. I intend to showcase my work, advertise what I'm capable of assisting you with and discuss what's new in the business of online and classroom learning. Be sure to check back often, as I have no intention of simply having a static website. There will always be something new to see and do.

Inexpensive Not Cheap Photos

As an insructional designer with little to no budget, I'm always looking for images to use in training. Stumbled across this little website and I thought, Perfect, that's awesome, quality photos for $1. Thought I would share with everyone.
http://www.dollarphotoclub.com/

I Couldn't Live Without Photoshop

I mean, I guess I could live without Photoshop, however I don't like to think about what that would be like. As an Instructional Designer, I write narration for my online courses, design interactions for my students to complete and build course structures for the courses to follow, however at some point the courses I design need to look like something. I rely on a mixture of stock photography, graphics that I dream up, and my own photography.  One of the tricks I use is to ensure my images are in some way uniform, mostly in size but also in colour as well.  It gives my designs a professional look and feel you don't usually see in the typical corporate PowerPoint training (I hate PowerPoint).

I found this Photoshop CS5 tutorial for beginners through the pop-up that shows up in Adobe Captivate and I thought I would share it.  I haven't gone through it yet, but it looks pretty good. It contains over 13 hours of teaching material.  Based on the topic list, which I scanned, it looks like I could learn a few things here and there.

Learning Android App

I discovered a neat app for my Android devices in the Natonal Film Board of Canada App which you can find here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nitobi.nfb&hl=en
Culture is maintained by the people and isn't the responsibility of the government, however here in Canada, culture was certainly supported in the 1970s and 80s by organizations like the CBC and the National Film Board of Canada.  I think the work that the NFB did is something that should be supported and not simply left to rot in the audio/visual departments of libraries across Canada.
This app allows today's viewers to watch films and vignettes that people like myself grew up watching on public television.  I really recommend this app for Android users.

Wow, I Can’t Believe How Long It’s Been

Wow, I can’t believe how long its been since I blogged. I want to assure anyone who still might be looking at my blog that this is not because of a lack of interest, but rather an indication of how busy I have been.

For those that are not aware, I have been working for an international airport developing a catalogue of eLearning for them. At times I have been working on multiple projects at once and have found it stressful. I’m not sure if I have spoken about this topic before, but how do you manage multiple projects at once?

The answer to this question is project management. You need to plan your entire development cycle down to the smallest detail. This eliminates that point in your work where you sit there, wondering what to do next. If you break it down to enough small points, you know exactly what you need to accomplish each and every day. Here is an example of what I mean:

1. Meet with stakeholder and discuss the goals of training

2. Meet with subject matter experts and identify the steps or topics that need to be covered to achieve the goals of training

3. Write a learning plan (proposal for training) that shows what you intend to develop and why it will achieve the stakeholders goals

4. Schedule a meeting where the learning plan can be discussed

5. Revise learning plan based on feedback from meeting

6. Schedule a second meeting where you seek sign-off of learning plan

7. Begin your development of training, and so

Of course I assign dates and how much time each of these steps will take. This continues with the rest of ADDIE and I storyboard my courses, usually go through two or three rounds of reviews, followed by my development in the authoring tool with a few rounds of reviews as well.

The advantage of using this detailed approach is that you can be very accurate in estimating when you can deliver a project. It also keeps you on point. Have you ever arrived at work and wondered, what should I work on next? This answers that question. Go to your project plan and see what the next task is that you need to complete.

Where this gets tricky is when you are managing multiple projects at once.