Captivate 201 – Adobe Captivate Advanced

Class Description
In this 2-day Advanced Adobe Captivate training class, you will master industry-standard production workflows and new features found in the latest release of Adobe Captivate. Give your eLearning career the edge it deserves by learning advanced tips and techniques from Adobe’s top Captivate experts. This advanced Captivate training class will empower you to create fully-responsive eLearning content. Power up your professional profile and stand out among peers by mastering Adobe’s industry-leading Captivate elearning authoring and development platform.

It includes:

  • Creating a standard library of Captivate project templates and named objects
  • Advanced techniques for course enrichment using custom animations, complex interactivity, process cycles, pyramids, drag and drop, and other smart learning assets
  • Best practics and production workflows for planning and creating both static & responsive courses and projects 
  • Speeding up production by creating and sharing advanced actions and variables across projects
  • Using expressions for mathematical equations and string concatenation
  • Using conditional actions, combo actions, system and user variables, and decision blocks
  • Using custom styles and widgets, advanced branching and scripting, customizing breakpoints and using the Captivate Aggrigator
  • Advanced responsive techniques including fluid boxes, the position inspector, and breakpoint object styles
  • Using Adobe Captivate with other applications, such as Adobe Creative Cloud
  • Building storyboards using Adobe Captivate Draft
  • Previewing and publishing SCORM/Tincan compliant Captivate courses and manifests to a LMS (Learning Management System) 
  • Creating accessible, 508-compliant elearning content adding closed captions and keyboard shortcuts

Course Benefits
Unlock the future of smart eLearning design and expand your skills at rapidly authoring brilliant, interactive, responsive HTML5-based eLearning content and courses. Save time, money, and effort while you learn advanced techniques for creating and curating your own content library of standard video learning modules for increased learner retention. Create production-quality HD videos as you simultaneously record your webcam and on-screen content with just a few clicks. Use Captivate’s enhanced Fluid Boxes to automatically author fully responsive eLearning content that works across all devices and browsers. You will quickly learn Captivate’s higher-end functionality while improving your production skills via project templates, object styles, master slides, Themes and advanced actions. You’ll ensure your eLearning and mLearning output can be used by people with disabilities by adding such 508-compliant features as accessibility text and closed captions. Ensure your eLearning content reports data by learning about LMSs, SCORM, SCORM Cloud, AICC, TinCan, SCOs, Manifests, and how to upload a published lesson into a Learning Management System.

Who Should Attend
This class is ideal for instructional designers , eLearning consultants, L&D and training professionals, educators, trainers and business users that have basic to intermediate proficiency in instructional design and eLearning course-creation workflows using Captivate who want to advance their Captivate skills to the next level. 

Suggested Prerequisites
Attendance of our Adobe Captivate class or equivalent knowledge

Course Outline

Interactive Software Simulations and Caption Pre-Editing

You’ll record a software simulation using Captivate’s Custom recording mode. Then you’ll edit a little-known language file and control the text that appears in Captivate text captions before you record any screen actions.

  • Rehearse a Script
  • Set Recording Preferences
  • Record a Simulation
  • Edit a Text Capture Template
Object Styles, Project Sharing, and Branching

If you’ve created several small projects, you’ll learn that you can easily combine them into one larger project. Once you’ve combined projects, you’ll learn how to create jumps (branches) between different parts of the bigger lesson. And you’ll learn how to create custom object styles.

  • Create a New Style
  • Apply an Object Style Globally
  • Export and Import an Object Style
  • Name a Slide
  • Copy/Paste Project Assets
  • Use Buttons to Create a Branch
  • Explore the Branching View
  • Create a Branch Group
Variables and Widgets

Variables serve as placeholders for data. The data can be used to provide feedback to the learner, create Advanced Actions, add content, or configure widgets. Widgets give Captivate developers the ability to extend Captivate’s functionality without limits. You’ll learn how to both insert widgets and how to configure them in a project.

  • Add Project Information
  • Insert a System Variable
  • Edit a System Variable
  • Create a User Variable
  • Use a Variable to Gather Learner Data
  • Insert and Format a Widget
Interactive Videos and Virtual Reality

Captivate allows for videos (any videos) to include a high level of interactivity via knowledge checks, learner interactions, and more. You will learn how to insert an interactive video, insert bookmarks on the video timeline, and jump to the marks from any point in the video or from other Captivate slides. You will also create overlays that will appear on the video. You’ll also create virtual reality projects by importing supplied 360 images into a new virtual reality project.

  • Insert an Interactive Video
  • Add Bookmarks
  • Add Slide Overlays
  • Create a Virtual Reality Project
  • Add a Text Hotspot
  • Add an Audio Hotspot
  • Add a Quiz to a Virtual Reality Project
Interactions

Interactions, also referred to as Smart Learning Interactions, are powerful widgets that allow you to quickly insert interactive objects onto a slide. Captivate ships with a wide range of Interactions, such as Process Cycles and Pyramids, and you can download others. As you work with Interactions, you’ll find that you can customize not only the content but also the look and feel of the Interaction. You’ll learn how to use Captivate’s Drag and Drop feature to engage your learners like never before. And as you do, you’ll implement states that will allow you to change the appearance of objects at will.

  • Insert a Process Circle
  • Create a Basic Drag and Drop Interaction
  • Manage Drag and Drop Buttons and Write Captions
  • Create a “Trick” Retry Slide
  • Explore an Advanced Drag and Drop Project
  • Create an Advanced Drag and Drop Interaction
  • Change the States of a Smart Shape
  • Use States to Swap Images
Accessible eLearning

Creating eLearning lessons and courses that are accessible to citizens with disabilities may be a requirement in your organization. During these lessons, you’ll learn some Section 508 best practices, and how to implement them within a Captivate project.

  • Set Document Information
  • Enable Accessibility
  • Add Accessibility Text to Slides
  • Import Slide Audio
  • Add Shortcut Keys
  • Add Closed Captions
  • Set a Tab Order
Advanced Actions

When a learner clicks on a button or click box, an Action occurs. But what if you want multiple, conditional actions to occur? You’ll be introduced to Captivate’s Advanced Actions that will allow objects to perform multiple tricks for every learner click.

  • Use a Completed Action
  • Name Objects
  • Create a Mask
  • Control Object Visibility
  • Create a Standard Advanced Action
  • Attach an Action to a Button
  • Group Timeline Objects
  • Create a Variable
  • Create a Conditional Action
  • Create Decision Blocks
Project Templates and Master Slides

Efficiency doesn’t reach much higher than this… learn to keep the look and feel of your Captivate projects consistent across slides and projects when you create master slides, apply and customize Themes, and create and use Project Templates.

  • Work with the Main Master Slide
  • Work with Content Masters
  • Apply a Master to Filmstrip Slides
  • Edit a Master
  • Apply a Theme
  • Create a Custom Theme
  • Review a Template
  • Create a Project Based on a Template
  • Create a Project Template
Responsive Projects

The size of the screen that learners use to access eLearning lessons can vary widely. Consider the size of a typical mobile phone compared to the various shapes and sizes of tablets, such as the Apple iPad, Microsoft Surface, and Amazon Kindle Fire. You could develop several Captivate projects that contain the same content but are sized to work on specific devices; however, the problem is that you’d have to edit and update several projects! Who wants to do that? Additionally, who could possibly consider every screen size for every device? Even if you could build lessons for every screen size known today, what about the screen sizes for devices that have yet to be invented? During this module, you’ll learn how to navigate Captivate’s responsive interfaces (Fluid Boxes and Breakpoints), and how to create responsive projects from scratch.

  • Customize Breakpoints
  • Save a Standard Project As Responsive,
  • Insert and Name Fluid Boxes
  • Resize Fluid Boxes
  • Add Content to Fluid Boxes
  • Switch Modes
  • Use the Position Inspector
  • Modify a Single Breakpoint
  • Exclude from View
  • Add a New Breakpoint
  • Position and Link Objects
  • Edit Breakpoint Object Styles
Reporting Results

If you’ve included a quiz in your eLearning lesson, it’s likely you’ll need to track the quiz results. And if working with an LMS is a requirement, we’ve got you covered there. You’ll learn how to prepare a Captivate project so that it will work with an LMS, preview a lesson in the SCORM Cloud, and upload a lesson to an LMS and test it.

  • Set Quiz Reporting Options
  • Create a Manifest File
  • Report a Button Interaction
  • Adjust Slide Object Interaction
  • Preview in SCORM Cloud
  • Publish a Content Package
  • Create an Inquisiq LMS Account
  • Create an LMS Course
  • Attach a Lesson to a Course
  • Test an eLearning Course

Related Classes

Our goal is to make sure your class meets your objectives, not ours. Therefore, all of our outlines are treated as guides to help steer the workshop. This outline does not guarantee that all the topics listed will be covered in the time allowed. The amount of material covered is based on the skill level of the student audience. We may change or alter course topics to best suit the classroom situation.

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