Frank Nguyen

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"I'll have the Number three Animal Style with a root beer."  My wife laughs at me when we eat at In-N-Out Burger because I order the same thing every time: Number three Animal Style with a root beer.

Anyone who lives in or has visited Arizona, California, or Nevada knows what I'm talking about. This fast food chain is renowned for its simple menu composed of ultra-cheap, ultra-fresh burgers, french fries, shakes, and sodas. Your meal is built by an assembly line of frenetic workers seconds after you order it. If you look closely, you may even witness a mountain of potatoes being cut by a burly 16 year old using a manually operated french fry press. It is arguably a staple of the Southwest American diet.

For years, I went to In-N-Out Burger obliviously believing that the three-item menu proudly displayed above the cash registers were the extent of their offerings. Then a friend shared with me knowledge that has been imparted on a select few: They have a secret menu. If you place your order Protein Style, you will be served a burger wrapped in hand-leaf lettuce instead of a bun. My favorite choice, the Animal Style, adds a pickle, extra spread, and grilled onions. For the adventurous few, you can order a 4 x 4—four patties and four slices of cheese on one bun. How secrets like this stay hidden is beyond me!

The funny thing is that many instructional design and development practices are disseminated the same way as this secret menu: Tribal knowledge spread through conversation, whispers, and sometimes speculation. Not sure how to best teach new hires your company's processes and procedures? Ask a senior designer with years of experience with the company. Not sure of the best approach to implement your company's new compliance policies? Ask your next-door cube neighbors for their ideas. Not sure how to record and deliver audio using your e-learning authoring tool? Ask some peers in an online discussion forum.

Although this word-of-mouth approach is timely, easy, and readily accessible, often times the opinions derived are just that: Opinions that may be based on formal education, experience, conversations, urban legends, or notes scribbled on the bathroom wall. Fortunately for us, researchers have spent years analyzing human learning and have discovered effective instructional design strategies and media practices. Although this research may not be as accessible or straightforward as simply asking your peers or in-house experts for their opinion, you can be assured that, by applying evidence-based practices to the development of your e-learning content, you will provide consistent learning and job transfer for your learners. In this article, I talk about these practices and how you can apply them as you create e-learning content with Adobe Captivate 3.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial, you will need to install the following software:

Adobe Captivate 3

• Try
• Buy

Evidence-based e-learning practices

One of the most common questions I hear from the designers I have worked with is: "What's the best way for me to use audio and visuals in my e-learning course?" This is the same question that has wracked the brains of academics and scientists, and there are several lines of research that provide answers.

Use relevant visuals

Dr. Richard Mayer has conducted research on the best ways to use media for learning for over thirty years at the University of California Santa Barbara. He has found that learning using words with a relevant graphic can lead to an average 89% increase in learning compared to using words alone (Clark & Mayer, 2007). Of course, any old graphic simply won't do. As pointed out by Clark (2004), graphics that are "decorative" in nature or provide enhanced elements beyond just the basic content itself tend to distract learners from the real content that they need to master. Instead, graphics should contribute to the learning by illustrating relationships between concepts, demonstrating a process, or in the case of software procedures, visually representing the actual screens a computer user will work with on the job.

Describe visuals with audio only

Once you have developed a relevant graphic to illustrate your content, the most obvious and tempting thing to do is to provide some written text to explain the graphic and provide more detail to the learner. However, Mayer has found that using visuals with audio narration by itself provides significantly better learning as compared to a visual with text or a visual with text and audio narration (Clark & Mayer, 2007). To learn more about these studies, refer to Dr. Ruth Clark's white paper on Leveraging multimedia for learning (PDF, 2.6MB).

Adjust your approach to the audience

Of course, these rules need to be bent on occasion. In particular, you should consider your audience's level of knowledge and the environmental factors that will affect your training implementation.

The evidence-based practices mentioned above are largely based on research with novices. These are individuals with little to no knowledge about a content domain and may struggle to simply learn the material. However, Kalyuga, Ayers, Chandler, and Sweller (2003) have found that the effectiveness of certain instructional design techniques depends on the level of learner expertise. In certain cases, approaches that increase learning for novices can negatively impact learning for experts. If you find yourself in a situation where you are delivering content via e-learning to very advanced learners, consider simplifying the complexity of the media in your course by reducing or eliminating audio and providing written text for these experts to skim and navigate through at their discretion.

In addition to research on learner expertise, you need to weigh more practical considerations when applying the guidelines. If your learners do not have computers with audio capabilities, your best alternative is to provide visuals with text. This is also true in the case of learners who do not have strong mastery of the language used in the e-learning course. If network bandwidth is a major issue, you should reconsider the quality and quantity of audio, animated visuals, full motion video, or other size-intensive media elements.

Making sense of the research

To help you to make the best decision on which instructional media elements to include in your e-learning course, you can use the instructional media decision matrix (see Figure 1). This diagram steps you through the various environmental questions you should consider and helps you come up with the best combination of visuals, text, and audio to maximize the effectiveness of your learning content while balancing practical considerations.

Figure 1. The instructional media decision matrix offers suggestions regarding the types of multimedia elements to provide.

Applying the research to e-learning development

At this point you may be thinking that these evidence-based practices all sound fine and dandy on paper, but you're curious how the concepts can be applied in the real world. How do I use these concepts to create more successful e-learning content in Adobe Captivate 3?

Use relevant visuals

The type of content you are presenting for instructional materials will largely drive the type of visuals you should include and how they should be added to your Adobe Captivate project. If you are dealing with software procedures, you should include screen shots of the actual application your learners will use. If the application has already been developed and is readily available, you can simply use the new Software Simulation project wizard in Adobe Captivate 3 to record simulations (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. The new Software Simulation project wizard in Adobe Captivate 3 enables you to record simulations.

More information regarding how to use this new feature is available in the Adobe Captivate documentation.

If you are dealing with any other type of content, then it is likely that you will need to create and edit your images outside of Adobe Captivate and then import them into your project. This scenario includes mocked-up screen shots of an application that has not yet been developed, diagrams illustrating abstract business process, visuals demonstrating a physical procedure in a factory or warehouse, or even pictures of different animals for a third-grade lesson about zoology.

To bring such graphic elements into an Adobe Captivate 3 project, you can use the new Image Project wizard (see Figure 3). This feature can be found by selecting either the Record or Create a new project options from the opening window and clicking Other.

Figure 3. Adobe Captivate 3 includes the new Image Project wizard.

After you select a window size for your project, a dialog box will appear prompting you to locate the image (or images) that you'd like to import into your new project (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Select graphics to import into a new Image Project wizard.

You may import more than one image by holding the Control key while selecting each desired image. If you are importing multiple images, it is generally a good idea to place all of the images in one folder and rename the files in the order that you would like them to appear in the project. If the images you are importing are larger in size than the project dimensions that you predefined, Adobe Captivate 3 will ask you to confirm whether the images should be cropped (cut vertically and horizontally to fit to your project dimensions) or resized (proportionally scaled to fit the project dimensions) as they are imported (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. The Import Image dialog box enables you to select between cropping and resizing imported images.

In most cases, you can simply select the Apply to all images checkbox and then click Resize. After a few magical seconds, Adobe Captivate 3 will create a new project with all of your imported images stored in individual slides in the project (see Figure 6).

Figure 6. The Edit panel of project displays the imported images as slides.

At this point, you can reorder the slides if you did not rename the files sequentially prior to import. You can also add additional images by selecting Insert > Image or adjust the settings of individual slides at your discretion.

Describe visuals with audio only

Similar to visual elements, there are two ways to incorporate audio into your project. You can use the built-in recording features in Adobe Captivate 3 or you can create audio files externally and then import them into Adobe Captivate. Unlike visuals, however, the way that you choose to incorporate audio into your Adobe Captivate 3 project is completely independent of the type of content you are building. It is really a matter of personal preference.

If you would like to record audio directly into your existing project, select Audio > Record > Project to access the Record Audio window (see Figure 7).

Figure 7. The Record Audio window enables you to record narration directly into your project.

When using the Record Audio window, I prefer to turn off the Continuous Play option. This enables you to navigate through each slide at your own pace using the forward and back arrows located below the slide image. When recording audio files for each slide, it's likely you'll be presented with the Audio split options dialog box (shown in Figure 8) if the audio track that you've recorded is longer than the time specified in the timeline for that slide. Don't fret. Simply select the first option to lengthen the slide timing to match the audio file, and then move onto the next slide in your project.

Figure 8. The Audio split options enable you to reset the timing of the slide to match the length of the audio file.

If you would like to record audio using an external sound editing application and then import it into your project, navigate to the corresponding slide in your project and select Audio > Import. You'll be prompted to navigate to the audio file (which should be saved as either a WAV or a MP3 file). Once imported, the audio file will automatically be associated with the current slide in the project and will appear as an asset in the Library window. You will need to repeat this process for each slide in your project that requires an external audio file.

Adding text elements

By far, the biggest conundrum with following the evidence-based practices mentioned earlier is figuring out how to present text. If you've determined that it is not advisable or practical to deliver audio elements to your audience, then using text captions directly on the screen is the best approach. Integrate the text caption with the related visual element by placing captions next to the object or area of the screen being discussed at that point in time (see Figure 9).

Figure 9. Adding integrated text captions to visual elements directs attention to course materials.

It may even be useful to highlight the area being referenced using a visual cue such as a red or green box or arrow. This is true whether you choose to implement audio or text. If your audience is comprised primarily of novices with access to audio capabilities, then it is recommended that you avoid using any onscreen text at all.

If your audience is a mixture of learners at various levels, Adobe Captivate 3 offers another solution. You can subtitle your materials with closed captioning. Closed captioning offers learners the ability to display an onscreen transcript of the audio narration at their discretion. To add closed captioning to your project, select Audio > Advanced Audio Management to access the Advanced Audio Management window (see Figure 10).

Figure 10. The Advanced Audio Management window enables you to select the slide in your project that you want to update with closed captioning text.

Select the slide that you'd like to update with a transcript, and then click the Closed Caption button (the icon that resembles a thought bubble to the right of the Update button) to access the Closed Captioning window (see Figure 11).

Figure 11. The Closed Captioning window enables you to add transcription text to a slide.

Click the green plus (+) button to create a caption entry, and then enter the text you would like to add to this screen. If desired, you can add more than one line of text and adjust the timing of each caption. Given the fact that different learners read at different speeds, it is recommended that you avoid over-complicating your closed captions. For best results, provide your learners with as much navigation control as possible. Let them determine when they are ready to read the next caption. Repeat the process of adding closed-caption entries for each slide that requires a text transcription.

After adding the closed-caption entries and publishing the file, the captions are displayed on top of each slide within a translucent block to improve legibility (see Figure 12).

Figure 12. The published project displays the closed captioning on top of the slide.

Learners can press the cc button located on their toolbar to enable and disable the text transcriptions. As mentioned earlier, research shows that providing learners with both an audio track and redundant text (closed captioning) may actually inhibit learning. In an ideal world, if the learner turns on closed captioning, the audio track would automatically pause or mute. However, this capability does not currently exist. As a best practice, advise your learners to mute the audio in the Adobe Captivate movie or on their computesr if they will be using the closed captioning feature.

Where to go from here

If you would like to learn more about evidence-based practices and find out how to best use media in your e-learning courses, consult the online and printed resources listed below.

References

• Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R.E. (2007). e-Learning and the science of instruction (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
• Clark, R.C., Nguyen, F., & Sweller, J. (2006). Efficiency in learning. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
• Clark, R. C., & Lyons, C. (2004). Graphics for learning. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
• Kalyuga, S., Ayres, P., Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (2003). The expertise reversal effect. Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 23-31.
• Also, be sure to visit the Adobe Captivate Developer Center to get useful tutorials, articles, and best practices for creating e-learning projects.

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