Password Protecting a Section of an Adobe Captivate 8 Project

I got a request from one of my YouTube channel viewers. She asked if I could show her a way to password protect a branch of an Adobe Captivate 8 Project. In this video I use a text entry box to store the password into a variable. I then used advanced actions to validate that password and send the user to the appropriate page within the course.

Watch the video below if you want to see how this was done in a little more detail.

Practical Dale's Cone of Learning

Edgar Dale came up with the concept of the Cone of Experience, or the Cone of Learning. The idea is that you can use the cone of experience to figure out what are the best ways for your learners to learn. Here is what it essentially says:

As adults, we generally learn…

• 10% of what we read,
• 20% of what we hear,
• 30% of what we see,
• 50% of what we see and hear,
• 70% of what they say and write, and
• 90% of what we do.

Now it kind of goes without saying that we want to try and get our learners to do something in our eLearning courses. If we simply had them read page after page of content, they are only going to remember a very small percentage of that material.

What this video to see how we can get learners doing something related to a policy document. I could have simply showed them how to get the document from the website, but instead, I have them do it themselves.

Do One Small Thing Really Well At a Time

As an instructional designer, I sometimes get overwhelmed by the amount of work that I need to accomplish in a project. If you look at a project holistically, you may get that feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff. In a typical eLearning project, there might be hundreds or even thousands of objects, multimedia, narration, job aids, and so on. In most cases all of these objects are designed and developed by a very small group of people, sometimes just yourself. This can cause a great deal of anxiety that will prevent you from moving forward, and that’s just one project at a time. Imagine having two or three projects with competing timelines or deadlines.

I don’t do well under these circumstances so I have devised a method to deal with it. I say ‘I’ but I didn’t invent something new. It’s really just project management, but here is what I do. I break a project down to the smallest of tasks possible. Sure that seems obvious, but I mean really break it down. For example, one of the very first tasks in designing and developing a course is to meet with the stakeholder and discuss the business objectives of training. That seems like a small enough chunk, but how does that event happen? Well you have to break it down further. Perhaps just that one item is actually the following items:

1. Identify who the stakeholders for a project are (it may not always be obvious, and it may not be the person requesting the training).
2. Write an agenda for the initial meeting so that the stakeholder can come prepared to answer your questions.
3. Consider or ask stakeholders if subject matter experts should be invited to the initial meeting (can be dictated by the complexity of the proposed training).
4. Find available meeting space.
5. Send a meeting invite that includes the agenda to the stakeholder and any identified subject matter experts.

As you can see, turning the one item into five or more items can be beneficial. It can take the stress away of looking at a project from a thousand miles up, but also make it very clear what you need to do next. Before I used this method, I would often run idle, in that I wasn't sure what to do next. I would waste time and not progress as rapidly as I could have. If you look at any one of these tasks above, you can see they are really easy, most of them could be accomplished in as short a time as a few minutes or less. For example, step one could be a phone call or two; step two is a few minutes using a Microsoft agenda template and considering the questions you would have to begin an analysis; step three could probably be piggy-backed on one of the phone calls you might make for step one; and steps four and five again are just a few minutes in Microsoft Outlook.

I look at all of this and consider that even if you save yourself only a day over the course of a month or so, imagine what you can do to improve your design if you had an extra day to improve your course. I know I've been in situations where an extra day is all it would take to meet or exceed my customer’s expectation of me, or to go from good eLearning to really great eLearning.

I hope you find my thoughts on this topic useful. If you find that this method makes sense, or you have tried it and have a way to improve it, I would love to know. Feel free to leave a comment below so we can all benefit by your ideas.

Making Adobe Captivate 8 Drag and Drop Behave the Way Other Questions Do

In this video I show you how you can make drag and drop questions behave the way that other question slides do. I do this by simply adding a caption after the pause point and a slide sized button to bring you to the next slide. Let me know what you think.

Creating Effective Evaluations That Are Tied To Learning Objectives

In this video I talk about how to make level 2 evaluations that are directly tied to your individual learning objectives using Adobe Captivate 8. The result for your learners are final quizzes that truly test a learners ability to demonstrate the competencies of the training.

More Advanced Actions in Adobe Captivate

In this video I show how you can hide navigation buttons until your users have completed a certain set of tasks, in this case visit four different tabbed pages. I use four variables and two different types of advanced actions.

Easy Principles of Adult Learning for Online Use

During my career I have seen the principles of adult learning expressed many different ways. I decided some time ago to write them out the way that I find them practical for my use. You don't have to agree with my interpretation of them, however I hope that you do. I've tried to express them in the simplest terms possible in the following points:

1. Adults are autonomous and self-directed. Adults should be given control over their learning. This can be achieved in online learning by offering a variety of methods to learn. I'm not talking about learning styles, but rather simply offering choices for your learners. For example, learners could have the choice of reading a passage, or watching a video on the same subject. Also avoid restrictions in even something as simple as navigation of the course materials. If the adult learner would like to learn about the third topic first, this flexibility should be allowed. Adult learners should be given something to do rather than just letting them listen to narration or read text on the screen. Eventually adult learners who are continuously being lectured to or even being forced to watch videos for a long period of time will tune out. Having adult learners complete a variety of activities, even when they don’t know the solutions yet, is far more engaging than simply listening or watching.

2. Adults have accumulated a foundation of life experiences and knowledge. Adults should be allowed and encouraged to reflect on their own knowledge and experience.  Trial and error type exercises will help adult learners to tap into their intuition and experience, even if they have to guess at the correct answers.  This keeps the training active and keeps the learners involved. When adult learners get the answer wrong, the course design should use the opportunity to turn feedback into a teaching point, rather than just stating their answer is incorrect. Case studies and scenario based activities are a great way to do this.

3. Adults are goal oriented. Online courses should be organized and have clearly stated objectives.  Knowing details like, how long the course will take, what topics will be covered and how the learners will be tested, help adult learners align the course to their own goals. Having clearly stated objectives that state the expected performance helps them stay motivated.  They will see how the learning will be applied back on their workplace. 

4. Adults are relevancy oriented. Adult learners need to see a reason for learning something.  Early in the course a page should be dedicated to the benefits of the course.  Isolate why the course is of benefit to the organization, but also what learners will get out of the course as well.  If a benefit is provided that they can identify with, their motivation to successfully complete the training goes up.

5. Adults are practical. Online learning should be focused on what adult learners need to know back on the job.  Any material that is outside the learning objectives should clearly be indicated as optional or even avoided.  A method for learners to skip optional content should be made available. Adult learners may not be interested in knowledge for its own sake. Scenarios from their job should be used when possible so the relevancy is clear.  If scenarios are not applicable to adult learners, they will lose motivation for the course.  

6. Adults need to be shown respect. When writing for adult learners, a conversational style should be used as someone would speak to a colleague.  The narration should never speak down to adult learners. Writers sometimes like to show off their knowledge of the English language. Obscure word usage should be avoided as it can come across as condescending. When creating exercises in training, the goal should be to create activities that test the learner’s knowledge and skill, not create activities that are tricky or test for something outside the course objectives.

Going Back in Time and Using Macromedia Captivate 1.01

In this video I decided to go back in time and attempt to use Macromedia Captivate 1.01, the first version of Captivate from 2004. I never did used this version of Captivate before. My first experience with this software was version 2 and then almost immediately version 3. There are things that I completely forgotten about and I was reminded of the older methods of doing certain things. For example, I was reminded that there wasn't really any property panels like there are today. Back then, you simply double clicked to bring up a sort of property window. Another item that I briefly looked for but didn't find was advanced actions. I can't imagine how you accomplished much without them, but I guess people did. Check out the video and enjoy.

Not Paying Attention in English Class

If you’re like me, you were a self-made instructional designer. When I should have been paying attention in English class I was instead planning my future as a rock star or something. I missed valuable lessons on writing. I found these great posters from theoutmeal.com that were excellent reminders of when and how to use many commonly misspelled and misused words. Check these out:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

Adding Closed Captioning to Embedded Videos in Adobe Captivate

In this video I talk about how to add Closed Captioning to embedded videos within Adobe Captivate 8. Also I talk a little about why responsive design isn't always required or necessary. Thanks to my friend Robert for asking me about this.