The Rapid Development Tools Intensive: Intermediate and Advanced Concepts and Techniques 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions The Cool Stuff! Joseph Ganci, Dazzle Technologies
Dazzle Technologies Corp. For all your custom creative e-learning needs! Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions The Cool Stuff! Joseph Ganci Dazzle Technologies Corp. jganci@dazzletech.com June 2010 elearning Guild Online Forums 401 - Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions The Cool Stuff! Member, Adobe Captivate Advisory Board Member, Adobe e-learning Advisory Board Join our free lists! Captivate tips: email with subject line join to TipsCaptivate@dazzletech.com Authoring Tools tips: email with subject line join to TipsAuthoring@dazzletech.com e-learning tips: email with subject line join to TipsElearning@dazzletech.com Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions
Table of Contents Variables The Holders of Information...1 System Variables...1 User Variables...4 Creating Advanced Actions The Performers...6 Sample Scripts...6 Updating the Number of Tries on Each Question...9 Your Homework Assignment...12 Thank You!...12 Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions
Variables The Holders of Information Simply put, variables hold information. Think of them as a box into which you put a number or a user s name, a title of a book or the score the user received on a quiz. Some variables you create and maintain yourself. These are called user variables. Other variables are automatically available to you in Captivate. Those are called system variables. System Variables Choose Project > Actions and choose the Variables tab in the resulting dialog. Next, choose System from the Type drop down. You will then see each system variable and its description. You can filter the system variables by those associated with movies controls, move information, movie meta data, system information or quizzing. Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions Page 1
Let s see how we can use system variables to enhance our e-learning. 1. Insert a new text caption on the screen. 2. Type Page and a space. 3. Now click the button highlighted below. 4. Clicking the button will cause the following to display. 5. Scroll down until you find the variable called cpinfocurrentslide and click OK. Notice that the variable name is now inserted into the text caption with two dollar signs ($$) on either side. The dollar signs tell Captivate that this is a variable and that it should show the value of the variable at run time. 6. Now type a space and choose the Insert Variable button again. This time choose the variable called cpinfoslidecount. The result should look like the caption below. Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions Page 2
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7. Placing this expression on any slide will show the learner the current slide number and the total slide count, as in the following: Page 2 of 12 User Variables Let s say that we will determine how well the learner does by comparing the number of questions answered correctly to the total number of questions. It would be convenient to store the number of questions in a variable at the start of our Captivate lesson so that if we ever need add or remove questions from our file, we need to change this information only once in our file. Creating Our User Variable We start by choosing Project -> Actions. The first tab is Variables. Choose User from the Type dropdown list and click the Add New button. Once you ve done that, type the new variable name in the Name field. Let s call it NumQuestions. Once you ve typed the name, the Add New button becomes Save. Click it and now you can use the variable. Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions Page 4
Assigning a Value to Our User Variable Now that you ve created your variables, let s assign our NumQuestions variable to the number of questions in our file. On our first slide, we choose Properties and then change what happens on Slide Enter. As you can see, we chose Assign from the drop down menu and then chose our NumQuestions example from the Assign drop down. Finally, we typed the value we wish to have NumQuestions hold in the with field, 3. We can now use NumQuestions whenever we want to create an action that needs to determine what to do next based at least in part with how many questions are in our file. This is an age-old technique for making your file much easier to maintain because if there Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions Page 5
are several places in your file where you need to remember this information, you need only change one place in your file (the dialog above) when you need to modify the number of questions in your file. Creating Advanced Actions The Performers If variables hold information, think of actions as acting on information. Variables contain; actions do. 1. Choose Project > Actions and choose the Advanced actions tab in the resulting dialog. Next, choose System from the Type drop down. 2. Now drop down the Edit / Action action options and choose Create a new action. 3. You can now create a script by double-clicking the Statement line in the box below and choosing from the drop-down list of actions. Note that the actions here contain those normally associated with interactions, but you have additional ones as well. They are: a. Show show an object currently on the timeline that you have previously hidden. b. Hide hide an object currently on the stage. c. Enable enable a button or other element that you have previously disabled. d. Disable disable a button or other element, making it inactive. Sample Scripts Let s start with a file that has three questions in it, questions that we have created ourselves using text entry boxes, buttons and/or click boxes. We want to keep track of whether or not the learner answers each question correctly on the first try. If so, we will increment a score by 1 each time. At the end, we will decide if the learner received a perfect score by comparing the score received with the number of questions. If they are both the same, that means each question was answered correctly. We first need to create new user variables. We will need a variable that keeps track of how many tries the user needed on each question, so we will create three separate variables, one for each question, and call them: Q1_Tries Q2_Tries Q3_Tries Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions Page 6
We also need to keep track of the score along the way, so we will create another user variable: Score Finally, we will need to keep track of the number of questions. While we can compare our user variable Score to the value of 3, because we have three questions, what if we decide to later add or delete a question? It would be simpler to set a variable at the start in which we will load the value of 3, making it easier to update later if we change the number of questions. NumQuestions Assigning the Number of Questions On the very first slide of our lesson, we will open the slide s properties and set the following: Now our NumQuestions variable has been set to a value of 3. Updating the Number of Tries on Each Question When the learner chooses the wrong answer to a question, we need to increment the number of tries for that question. Remember we created user variables earlier to track this. If the user clicks a button, for instance, that is the wrong answer, we change the option below to Multiple actions and click the button to the right. Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions Page 7
When we do so, we will then see this dialog. In it, we set actions so that when the user clicks the wrong answer button, we increment the variable Q1_Tries by 1 and then jump to the next slide, where we will present specific feedback for the wrong answer. For each wrong answer, we do the same. For the right answer, we instead do the following. In this script, we increment the number of tries by 1 and then we check if the number of tries is actually equal to 1, meaning this was the first attempt to answer the question. If it is, we increment the score by 1. Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions Page 8
We repeat the above process for the other questions, using the variables Q2_Tries and Q3_Tries. Updating the Number of Tries on Each Question After all the questions have been answered, we will run the following script to determine if the learner answered each question correctly. If so, we will take the learner to a congratulations screen. If not, we will inform the learner that he or she should repeat the lesson. Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions Page 9
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Using variables and actions, you have the ability to navigate in ways that are not possible through the standard navigation options available to you. Try your own actions and see for yourself how useful they can be! Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions Page 11
Your Homework Assignment 1. Experiment with other system variables and see how they may be able to enhance your courses in the future. 2. Create your own user variables to track. 3. Create actions be creative. If you run into any problems or you have questions, please email me your file and questions: jganci@dazzleteh.com. I will try to answer within 3 business days. Thank You! I appreciate your attendance in my class and hope that you found it useful! Email me your feedback and suggestions please: jganci@dazzletech.com Session 401 Adobe Captivate Variables and Actions Page 12