What’s the difference between a Captivate simulation and demonstration? Typically speaking, a simulation is interactive; a demonstration isn’t. Between the two, I urge you to create simulations because simulations will encourage your users to actively participate in your lessons. (Unless budget is not a concern, in which case by all means create both a simulation and demonstration for each and every lesson.)
While markedly different, simulations and demonstrations can both include Question Slides that can validate your lessons. But should you include the Question Slides in your project, or should you keep the Question Slides separate? Personally, I tend to keep the Questions Slides in a separate project and make the quiz available via a link on my LMS. Because you will have to worry about the Reporting options of the non-quiz slides, keeping the projects segregated is the cleanest/easiest way to go.
If you do decide to include Question Slides in a simulation, be warned–you could be throwing off your scoring results unless you take the appropriate evasive action.
How so? I’ve had several customer’s who have included interactive slides (slides with Buttons, Click Boxes or Text Entry Boxes) and sprinkled Question Slides throughout the project. Upon playback, the scoring was off (the user failed even if they answered the questions correctly) or the Question Slide numbers were off (the first Question Slide would say it was number 2 of 5 when it was the first Question Slide).
When you add Question Slides in the middle of interactive slides, Captivate treats everything like a quiz, even though the interactive slides may not be an actual part of the quiz. What’s a developer to do? Well, as they say, "If you can’t beat them…" We decided to treat the Interactive objects as part of the quiz without having the interactive elements actually count as points in the quiz.
Controlling How Objects Report Scores
- Open an interactive slide and double-click the interactive object
- Select the Reporting tab
- Select Include in Quiz and Report Answers
- Change the Point to 0
- Click OK
One important step to remember here:
- Choose Project > Quiz Manager
- On the Quiz Settings tab, ensure Allow backward movement is selected in the Settings area (this will allow users to go back to the interactive slides–without this setting enabled, users would be able to click the Button or Click Box, to move to the next slide, but would not be able to go back and take the lesson again)
- Click OK
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