Adobe Captivate Article

Introducing Adobe Captivate 3: Beyond screen recording

The last release of Adobe Captivate 2 already has propelled Adobe Captivate from a powerful screen capture tool into the leading rapid e-learning tool on the market used for e-learning content, technical documentation, informal learning, and marketing. The complete feature set that enables you to create screen recordings, simulations, scenario-based training, and quizzes in Flash format, without learning Flash, makes Adobe Captivate a very flexible tool. It has won a record number of industry awards in just a few months after the release, including the Brandon-Hall Excellence in eLearning award, Best Simulation Solution eLearning! Award, eLearning Guild Research Awards, and the Jolt Productivity Award.

Meanwhile, Windows Vista has shipped and Adobe Creative Suite 3 was released. Our team has been working overtime to quickly provide an updated version to support the new platform as well as export to Adobe Flash CS3. Adobe Captivate 3, however, is not just an update—it's a brand new version loaded with features that take your content far beyond screen recording.

In the new release, the Adobe Captivate team focused on three major themes: creating more effective learning content, working more efficiently, and offering ways to keep learners more engaged.

Creating effective learning content

Randomized quizzing and Answer Shuffle

One of the top requests we have received from you was the ability to display questions at a random order and also shuffle answers in multiple choice questions. Well, it's done, and it's extremely easy to use too.

Question pooling

In Adobe Captivate 3, you can assign quiz questions to one or more pools within your project, such as easy, medium, hard, or pre-test, post-test. Next, you simply insert Random question slides in the actual project and choose from which quiz pool they should be selected. Adobe Captivate does the rest, including figuring out the scoring based on the quiz questions you added.

New question types

Imagine an office safety course where you place an image on the screen and the learner has to quickly click the hazards in an image; or presenting two images of a product to a learner who has to find the seven differences between them. It's simple and fun with the new Hotspot question type in Adobe Captivate 3. You could even let learners drag words or short sentences into the correct order using the Sequence question.

Working more efficiently

Multimode recording

Offering a demonstration "Show me" mode with text captions and mouse movement, a practice simulation "Let me" mode with interactivity and feedback, and an assessment simulation "Test me" mode with scored interactions is now faster than ever and doesn't require additional recording work. Adobe Captivate 3 can generate these three very different learner modes in a single recording session. In addition, Adobe Captivate also offer a real-time recording mode for the quick-and-dirty demos that don't need interactivity or editing.

Automated re-recording

Many of our customers use Adobe Captivate to train large enterprise systems integrations that are web-based and take months to implement. With Adobe Captivate 3, updating procedural training is now as simple as telling Adobe Captivate to rerecord. Similar to recording a macro in MS Word, Adobe Captivate 3 is capable of creating a script of your actions in applications within Internet Explorer 6. If the web application has changed, simply tell Adobe Captivate to re-record for you.

XML export/import

If you have to localize your content, your translator will now be much happier. Adobe Captivate 3 exports caption text into a standard XML-based format, separating the content from the formatting within the caption. After the localization, simply import the XML file into a copy of your project.

Usability

We included quite a number of usability enhancements and features such as find and replace, the ability to record voice over while you are previewing the slides, a single Preferences dialog to edit all your settings in one place, slide grouping within the branching view, and more.

Engaging

Rollover slidelet object

Adobe Captivate provides the option for adding caption and image rollovers. Both are a bit static. Imagine you could play a slide within a slide, where a learner rolls over a screen area, text, or an image to find out more about it. The rollover slidelets have their own timeline, and you edit them just you would edit a slide. They support text, images, Flash video, and audio.

PowerPoint import with animations

Based on many user requests, we were able to improve the PowerPoint import, which now retains your slide object animations. Use Adobe Captivate to leverage your existing slides and then add audio and interactivity to turn them into a training piece.

Slide transitions

Need to get a learner's attention back to the screen? Or do you want to create a nice picture slide show? Simply select one of the many slide transitions to enhance your content.

The big picture

Adobe Captivate is typically part of an author's toolset, so we are continually working on integrating with other applications. With the new version, you can continue publishing directly to the Acrobat Connect server to instantly generate URLs or track learners without having to invest in a large Learning Management System (LMS). Thanks to the SWF output format, integration with other tools is easy as well:

• Use your Adobe Captivate screencasts or podcasts in your blogs or web pages by simply dragging the SWF into Contribute or Dreamweaver.
• Include it in your PDF documents and truly show, don't just tell!
• Integrate it into your online help topics or manuals by inserting it into RoboHelp or FrameMaker projects.
• Simply link to it from Flex applications to provide visual online help.
• Export to Flash and add ActionScript or generate Flash Lite output to play content on mobile devices.

Other tools integrate well with Adobe Captivate if you use the launch and edit feature in the library:

• Try Soundbooth to quickly remove noise from your voice recording
• Try Photoshop or Fireworks to edit images and pictures you've included

Have you thought of these uses?

• Let your SMEs use Adobe Captivate to record the screens and their narration, so you don't have to start from scratch creating content.
• Insert images and overlay click boxes to prototype and test your new e-learning design or application.
• Create podcasts using a single slide approach—the playback controls are already included—or export the MP3 for listening and learning on a device.
• Provide interactive images by adding rollovers to a single slide.

Getting started today

Download the trial and find out what you can do with Adobe Captivate 3.

To enable you not just with easy-to-use technology, but also the knowledge to develop highly effective content, we have worked with Ruth Clark, author of eLearning and the Science of Instruction and published Leveraging Multimedia for eLearning.

We would love to see what you do with Adobe Captivate! Please submit your examples.   

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