Setting Up the Authorware File

You should have previously installed the KO in Authorware using the instructions in the Requirements section. If you haven’t, be sure to download and install the KO. See Downloading and Installing the KO in the Requirements section of this article.

To set up an Authorware file, use the following steps:

1. Start Authorware. Create a new Authorware file by selecting File > New.
2. Open the Knowledge Objects dialog box if it isn’t already open (Select Window > panels > Knowledge Objects).
3. Choose Captivate e-learning in the Category pop-up menu.
4. Double-click the Captivate KO. Authorware copies it to the flowline and the KO dialog box opens. See Figure 3.
5. Select the SWF file you created and exported from Captivate by clicking the ellipses icon on the right. The path and name you browsed to appear in the text box. Alternatively, you can also type the path and name directly.

6. Change the Captivate file dimensions to those that you had selected in Captivate, in this case, 800 x 600. You can type the numbers directly or use the arrows to change the dimensions. You can also choose to change the location of the Captivate file on the presentation window.

   Note: If you also have your Authorware file set to the same dimensions as your Captivate file, the bottom of your Captivate file is truncated unless you turn off the title bar and the menu bar in the Authorware file properties and set the location coordinates to 0,0.

   On the right, you’ll see a place for an Authorware variable. This is a user variable of your choosing and specifies a property list of the results of your quiz. By default, the variable is called _cvTracking but you may change this.

7. You can also choose to see the results of the variable in the Authorware Trace window by selecting the Show the results in the trace window option. If you select this option, every time the frame changes in your Captivate file, the Trace window displays the variable’s contents.
8. If you use JavaScript in Authorware, which is possible in version 7 and higher, you can also select the Track to a JavaScript variable option.
9. Click OK. If the variable you chose to track doesn’t exist, Authorware asks you to create it on the spot. Select Yes. Authorware then notifies you that you must run the Authorware file at least once while in authoring mode before publishing to ensures that your specified size and location settings took effect.

Figure 3. The Captivate e-Learning KO dialog box

Running the Authorware File

Are you ready to try it out? Follow these steps:

1. Open the Trace window by selecting Window > Control panel (or press Control+2).
2. Click the Show Trace button, the last button on the right.
3. Resize the trace window as you like.
4. Click the Restart button in the Control panel. Your Captivate file executes in the presentation window.
5. Answer the question you created in your Captivate SWF file and press Continue to get feedback.
6. press Continue again to continue past the question

7. Look in the Trace window. You will see information similar to the following, all on one line:

   -- [["Date:"01/12/2005", #Time:"19:55:56",
   #interaction_ID:"Interaction10098", #objective_ID:"Quiz10022", 
   #interaction_type:"choice", #correct_response:"C", 
   #student_response:"C", #result:"C", #weighting:"1", #latency:"38.812"]]
   			  

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