Adobe Captivate 2 lets you quickly develop and deploy e-training modules

by Steven Pittsley CNE | Nov 30, 2006 8:00:00 AM

Tags: Mice, Workforce management, Adobe Systems Inc., Captivate 2, e-training, Steven Pittsley CNE, Adobe Captivate, training

6 comment(s)

Takeaway: How do you provide up-to-date training materials that will deliver usable, real-world knowledge to employees? One answer is Captivate 2, which simplifies the task of creating training demos and simulations. IT pro Steven Pittsley has been using Captivate for more than three years, and he offers this overview.

This article is also available as a PDF download.

In today's fast-paced world, providing effective and relevant training material can be difficult. Few people have the time to wade through a detailed instruction manual to find answers to their questions, and even fewer have time to watch an in-depth training video or attend a training class. One answer to this problem is Adobe Captivate 2.

Captivate provides a platform for quickly developing professional quality training simulations and demonstrations that will educate users without taking up an inordinate amount of their busy schedule. You can add audio, customize and edit presentation elements, create step-by-step handouts, and import various types of media, including pictures, .avi video files, .flv Flash Video, and .swf Flash files. Captivate also supports SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2, and AICC, which allows you to import quiz results and deploy simulations through a learning management system (LMS).

Captivate features

It takes very little training for someone to create a useful simulation or demonstration with Captivate. In fact, a little trial and error may be all the training that's required. Captivate's basic features are intuitive and easy to use. However, some advanced features and design ideas may require additional training or reference guides.

The recording features in Captivate 2 have been improved slightly in this version. Although still not perfect, Captivate is quite adept at capturing all of the motion, typing, and activities on the screen. When recording in Captivate, the area on the screen that's being recorded is outlined by a red bounding box, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A

You may decide to add things to a project or modify what you've recorded. Or you might want to import images or other types of visual content into Captivate and create a project without any recording. In such cases, you'll be working in Captivate's Edit mode, shown in Figure B.

Figure B

Captivate projects are divided into slides, similar to movie frames. Each slide contains a variety of elements, such as images, the mouse pointer, audio clips, and onscreen typing. In Edit view, the slides are displayed in the viewing pane on the left side of the screen. To edit a slide, you click on it to display it in the main frame of the window, where you can add the desired elements.

The timeline located near the top of the window allows you to modify the length of time the individual elements of the slide are displayed when the project is played. For example, you could add mouse click sounds to the mouse element shown on the timeline in Figure B. You can also access the element's properties by right-clicking on the element in the timeline.

Captivate 2 has added the ability to lock or hide certain elements in the timeline. Locking an element prevents it from being modified when you're working on other elements. When an element is hidden, it's not displayed in the main portion of the window. This allows you to work on something that may be hidden from view by other slide elements.

The lower portion of the Captivate window displays toolbar buttons that let you modify the various elements displayed on the slide. You can add text boxes, insert additional images, insert Flash content, center objects, and perform a variety of other customizations.

One of the best new Captivate 2 features is the project library bin. This storage area contains all the elements for the project, making it easy to drag and drop elements directly onto a slide. The project library bin is initially located on the right side of the screen, as shown in Figure B, but it can also be undocked and moved to a different location to increase the space for editing the slide.

Captivate allows you to create complex scenario-based projects that pass control to other slides within the project based on answers provided by the viewer. Adobe has added Branching view to Captivate 2, which enables you to view the logical relationships between the slides within the project. Branching view, shown in Figure C, is quite handy when you're creating scenario-based projects.

Figure C

Conclusion

Captivate 2 is a useful development tool for rapidly creating and deploying training simulations and demonstrations. You can also use it to develop complex scenario-based projects and a wide variety of other types of training modules. Although not nearly as flexible as Adobe Flash, Captivate still enables developers to quickly create high quality training modules without the complexity Flash requires.

Priced at a reasonable $599 per copy, or $299 for an upgrade version, Captivate 2 will provide a solid return on the investment through improved training materials and reduced training costs. An experienced Captivate developer could potentially develop a training module in just a couple of hours that can be shared across an entire organization. Depending on the situation, the cost savings could be tremendous.

Adobe provides a fully functional 30-day trial version of Captivate 2 for download. If you give it a test drive, you won't be disappointed.

6 comment(s)