6 Steps to Develop An E-learning Course Using Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate is the most widely used rapid authoring tool and one of most popular eLearning tools. Many users prefer developing their courses using Captivate. If we start developing the course without following a proper process, there might be a chance of running into problems where the developer might even need to develop the course again from the start.

For example, if a person develops 75% of his course using Captivate and later realizes the course size is different from what is needed, the course can be resized, but the images will be skewed and alignment will need to be adjusted again according the actual size. To avoid this rework, we need to follow a simple process.

In this blog I am going to explain the key points that will help new users develop an eLearning course quickly using Adobe Captivate.

Steps:

1. Start your project in Captivate
2. Set Actions to interactivities such as click on tabs, Next & Back buttons, etc.
3. Audio editing and syncing
4. Animations
5. Publish
6. Self QA 

When you are given a storyboard, check each and every slide. If you have any doubts, please ask the instructional designer for clarification.. Once your doubts are clarified, start developing the course in Captivate. During this process you need to save the course regularly once every 15 minutes and take the backup. If you are working on other projects, close the Captivate file because if suddenly the power goes off, there are chances of the Captivate file being corrupted. Let’s start.

1. Start your project in Captivate

• Set the Size of the Captivate course file (E.g. 1024*672980*640, or any other required size)
• Design the Master Slide according to the storyboard
• Start adding the Text and Images
• Design the Interactivities
• Insert Formative and Summative questions and design the Final Quiz result page
• Select the optimize option from the properties panel in every slide

2. Set Actions to interactivities such as click on tabs, Next & Back buttons, etc.

• Name the object for which the action has to be assigned
• Open the Action panel and Assign it to the objects wherever required
• Use Variables when there is a restriction or any advance action

3. Audio syncing

• Basic Editing can be done in Captivate, if not, use any audio editing software
• It is very easy to Sync the audio with the objects
• Set the Timings correctly
• Adjust the Layer according to the sync
• If the course is in a different language (other than English), sync with the help of Google Translator

4. Animations (effects)

• We have Multiple effects to use, but only a few support HTML5
• It is easy to apply Animation through the Effects Tab located in the Timing panel
• Animations can’t be applied to a Group or any bunch of objects. In latest version of Adobe Captivate, 9 we can apply animation to a Group of objects at once, but we can’t apply multiple objects in a slide.
• We need to apply animation to every object, and control the speed of animation using Frames
• Before publishing the course, Check the animation layers

5. Publish

• Based on the requirement, Publish the course to SCORM, AICC, TINCAN, etc.
• If the course is very big (nearly 100 slides), the file might get stuck while being published. To avoid this, we need to delete the history of Captivate files (cache) in ‘My Documents’ and also delete the browser history.

6. Self QA

Check the course before submitting

Check the course for the following:

• Text, images, color, smart shape designs, font style, font size, bold, italic, shadow, etc.
• Objects’, layers and slide duration
• Double spaces, if any
• Animations
• Functionality
• Alignments
• Audio sync
• Scoring in the result page
• Margins
• Optimize slides

Hope this blog helps you develop courses in Adobe Captivate without any rework. If yes, please comment.