Randomize the Quiz in Your Captivate eLearning Using Adobe Learning Manager

In this video, I show you how to randomize the quiz in your Captivate eLearning course using Adobe Learning Manager in this video tutorial. The principles may work with other LMSs; however, Learning Manager is the LMS I have access to.

All-New Adobe Captivate - Bookmarks as Triggers for Actions

In this video, I show you how to trigger actions from your timeline using bookmarks. In this example, we change the state of a multi-state image at certain points along the timeline.

All-New Adobe Captivate: Capture Learner's Name To Personalize Elearning

In this video, I show you a number of ways you can personalize your Adobe Captivate eLearning projects to make them more engaging for your learners.

Vimeo Bug Discovered

One of my clients reached out this week and told me that the projects I developed for them were no longer playing the audio for any slide videos from Vimeo.com. I have notified Adobe of this issue, and they have logged it as a bug. As soon as I learn more, I will share it here or on my Website: https://captivateteacher.com or my YouTube channel: https://YouTube.com/captivateteacher. Please let any other Captivate users who rely on Vimeo videos know about this issue. I hope that Adobe will correct this quickly. If you need to report anything to Adobe Technical Support, you can email them at CaptivateHelp@Adobe.com or fill out the form at https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

Hack Captivate Event Video Using Camtasia to Add Closed Captions

In this video tutorial, I will show you a way you can hard encode closed captions in your videos. This expands the ability to include closed captions not only with event video but when regular closed captions are not possible for other situations as well. As you can tell by my reaction, I never thought this was possible and so easy to implement. This tutorial assumes that you have access to Adobe Captivate and Techsmith Camtasia. Get a free trial of Camtasia here: https://bit.ly/CamtasiaCp

What I Learned Going Freelance

I got a request from another professional on LinkedIn to provide some advice to someone considering going freelance in the learning industry. I don't know if I have any secret formula for making it on my own, but I can share my personal experience.

I was working at the Toronto International Airport as an eLearning Designer, Developer, and after five years, my contract concluded. Rather than looking for the next company to work for, I decided to start my own consulting business. I knew that my employment was ending about three or four months beforehand, so my wife and I had time to save up some extra money. You won't always have the foresight that I did, but if you think you might want to go freelance, this is something you need to consider. The day you start your freelance business will be the scariest of all. Your bank balance will likely not increase, and it will probably get sizably smaller.

Here are some of the expenses I had upfront that I can recall. I'm sure I forget some of them, but these were the main ones.

• new laptop

• software for a new laptop

• office furniture

• equipment to make YouTube videos (more on that later)

• website

• domain name registration

• government sales tax registration

• master business license (differs depending on your location)

• business cards

Of course, I still had all the various household expenses that a typical family has to continue to pay.

My first problem was that I didn't know where I would find potential clients. I had worked for precisely two companies in learning and design, but the rest of the world didn't know who I was. I figured I needed to become well known to be successful in this industry. I started making YouTube videos about Adobe Captivate, the eLearning authoring tool that I use. I intended to clearly show that I knew the software well enough to have expert tutorials on YouTube. I hoped that someone looking for an eLearning developer would find my videos and reach out to hire me to have me build their eLearning for them.

This strategy did work, and I started to get clients to reach out to me for eLearning design and development jobs. There were two problems upfront. The first was that while I was working for the first client, I wasn't looking for client number two or three and so on. When it's just you, momentum can be a problem. The second problem was that my YouTube videos were generating questions from all these viewers. They had every conceivable question about the software you could imagine. I tried my best to help each person, but it was getting in the way of getting more paying clients. What I didn't realize right away was there was an opportunity to pivot my business model, if only slightly. I realized that some of these people asking questions might be willing to pay me to provide one-on-one instruction. I changed my website from https://paulwilsonlearning.com to https://CaptivateTeacher.com and started promoting that I offered both design and development services as well as the one-on-one instruction.

As I approach the fifth year of my freelance eLearning business, I feel comfortable enough to not worry too much about where my next client will come from. A couple of things of note is that while I was not the first person on YouTube to teach people about Adobe Captivate, I am the most consistent. I have posted at least one video per week for five years, and my audience has grown from just a few views to over 1.5 million views. Each year that I have been freelance, Adobe themselves have invited me to attend and speak at the Adobe eLearning Conferences in Washington DC as well as Las Vegas. For the last several live events, I have been an instructor for their Adobe Captivate Specialist certification class.

So I guess my main message to anyone starting their own business is that some of your opportunities might be disguised as something else. Please don't ignore these other opportunities. I quickly learned that ignoring these other opportunities could be overlooking a potential new revenue stream. It might seem at first that these other opportunities would get in the way of your main goals, but I can attest that your primary goals will still be there. My main goals might not be my main goals anymore. I now have revenue streams from teaching classroom courses, one-on-one classes, design and development work, and the YouTube channel has become very profitable as well. I used to say that the ad revenue from YouTube was enough to buy a pizza every couple of weeks, but I can no longer say that. Today I now measure it in vacations to Mexico for my wife and me to enjoy.

Adobe Learning Summit

The Adobe Learning Summit at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas Nevada is fast approaching and I’m really looking forward to it. The Adobe Learning Summit is held at the MGM Grand Conference Center, part of the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. The Adobe Learning Summit is a concurrent event held alongside the eLearning Guilds DevLearn conference, which is also held at the MGM Grand hotel. If you want to go and haven’t already signed up you can do so here.

This is my first Adobe Learning Summit and only my second Adobe sponsored conference. The first was the Adobe eLearning Conference held in the spring of this year, in Washington D.C. At this conference, I will be conducting a session entitled Create mLearning in 60 Minutes where I will review the techniques for integrating location-based technology into your Adobe Captivate eLearning and specifically mLearning projects. I will be sharing many of my secrets for not only preparing for rapid development but also how to design with mobile in mind.

One of the advantages of being asked to conduct a session at Adobe Learning Summit is that I will get to enjoy all the event has to offer as well. There are four tracks that are occurring simultaneously throughout the day. There is the Design & Authoring track, which my session is a part of; the eLearning Strategy track, which focuses on strategies that make your eLearning projects effective; the Hands-on track, where participants get hands-on experience with the applications from Adobe; and lastly the Future of eLearning, which addresses more of the bleeding edge of where the technology is taking us. My session is only an hour long so I have to decide what to participate in for the remainder of the day. Of course, I would love to have the time to see everything, however, that would require that I clone myself or get everyone to agree to come to my house and present their sessions all over again.

In the morning there will be the usual stuff like registration, a little continental breakfast and a kickoff with some opening notes, however right after all that will be the Keynote from Dan Lyons who will speak about his learning from a year in start-up hell. This will be in the grand ballroom and I’m looking forward to learning from him. I myself am around the year and a half mark with my freelance business and I still have many questions that are presently unanswered. Perhaps I’ll get some insight.

After Dan Lyons will be a thirty-minute session on what’s new from Adobe. There are some rumours that we will learn about the next release of Adobe Captivate. I’m not sure if this is when we will learn those details but I will be there to gather as much information as I can.

From 10:00 AM until 11:00 I have a choice between Storyboarding Essentials for Better Course Design with Sarah Gilbert, Gamify the Learner Experience with Lucas Blair, or the Modern LMS: Smart, Simple, Self-service with Jesse Novak. Alternatively, if I’m willing to dedicate my whole morning to it, I could also join my friends Anita Horsley and Pooja Jaisingh for their hands-on session Get the Best out of Adobe Captivate. I can’t decide but you can bet you will see me in one of these sessions.

From 11:15 AM until lunch time I can also choose between Make the Best Use of Multimedia Assets with Andrew Scivally, Foster a Learning Culture with Allen Partridge, or Interactive Video Learning: The Next Big Thing with Steve Haskin. I have to admit that I’m most interested in how to foster a learning culture. I know this is something one of my previous employers struggled with and I know that Allen is extremely knowledgeable when it comes to this sort of thing, however, I’m very interested in the use of multi-media in learning so Andrew and Steve are giving Allen some stiff competition. I’m just not sure.

After lunch, I will obviously be in my own session on the previously mentioned techniques on mLearning but if this doesn’t interest you, I totally understand if you want to check out Learner Evaluation Strategies with Jane Bozarth, Microlearning: Small Bytes, Big Returns with Ray Jimenez. In addition, fellow Canadian Phil Cowcill, and one of my eLearning heroes Joe Ganci will be conducting a hands-on session called Build Custom Interactions Using Advanced Actions, Variables, and JavaScript, which promises to allow you to get your hands dirty (in a good way).

In the last set of sessions, you can also pick up some great skills from my friend Damien Bruyndonckx who will be conducting a session called Ten Design Hacks with Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Captivate. In addition, there will be a session called Putting Mobile at the Center of Your Learning Strategy with Robert Gadd, and once again my friend Pooja Jaisingh will be addressing shrinking attention spans in her session.

We will all regroup in the Grand Ballroom at the Conference Center and hear once again from Allen Partridge with a tech sneak peek. It’s my guess that this is when we might learn something about the next version of Adobe Captivate. Followed by a closing session, likely with more people from the Adobe eLearning team. My guess is this is where you may get some time for questions and answers.

I’m really looking forward to getting together with all my Adobe Captivate friends and making some new friends. I hope to see you all there.

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.