Adobe Captivate 3: Creating Drop-Down Question Slides

You can quickly create Question Slides in Adobe Captivate 3 that allow you to gauge the effectiveness of your eLearning course. When you choose Quiz > Question Slide, you will be presented with several Question Types including:

• Multiple choice: Create a question that users must answer by selecting one or more correct answers from a list.
• True/False: Create a question that users must determine is either true or false.
• Fill in the blank: Create a question that users must answer by selecting from different text options to fill in a blank space within a sentence.
• Short answer: Create a question that users must answer with a word or phrase
• Matching: Create a question that provides users with two lists of items that must be correctly matched. 
• Hot Spot: Create a question that provides users with areas on the slide that they must correctly identify. 
• Sequence: Create a question that provides users with a sequence that they must arrange in the correct order.
• Rating scale (Likert): Create a question that asks users to specify their level of agreement with a statement.

I think you will agree that the list above gives you plenty of options. However, an email I received this past week pointed out that none of Captivate’s Question Types allows for answers that appear in a drop down menu. I suppose there is more than one way to work around the problem (I invite readers to email their alternative solutions and I’ll post them in this newsletter), but if you’d like to learn mine, read on…

Note: Before following the steps below, it may be helpful to watch a finished project that demonstrates a drop-down question. Click here to watch the demonstration. After you are finished, close the browser window and return here for your lesson.

Create the Question and Answers

Since you cannot create a drop-down question in Captivate via any of Captivates Question types, the first thing I did was create a simple drop-down question using some basic HTML and NotePad. Before you start rolling your eyes because you do not have HTML experience, the form is really, really simple to create… and you won’t have to type very much. In fact, here’s the code I used to create the one shown in the sample:

Create the page above and give it the name test.htm.Here is how the page should look when viewed via a Web browser (such as Internet Explorer):

Record the Movie in Manual Capture Mode

1. Using Adobe Captivate 3, choose Edit > Preferences
2. Select the Settings Category
3. Select Manual Recording from the Recording Type drop-down menu

   The remaining options are up to you, but you can see my preferences in the screen capture below (specifically, I deselected Record keystrokes)

   

4. Click OK
5. Record the movie by choosing File > Record/Create > New Project (Select Software simulation and Custom Size, and then click OK)
6. Select the Web page you created earlier from the Optionally, select a window you’d like to record drop-down menu and ensure Manual Mode is selected in the Recording area

   

7. Click Record

   A screen capture will be taken for you. But from this point on, you’ll need to be diligent about taking the remaining screen capture’s by pressing [Print] [Screen] on your keyboard.

   Basically all that I did was create 10 screen captures showing the drop down menu collapsed (closed), the drop-down menu open but with nothing selected, the drop-down menu open and one each showing each answer being selected and in its selected state. Then I stopped the recording.

The Captivate Production Phase

1. I added Click Boxes on Slide 2 (each one jumps the user to the answers shown in their selected state)
2. I added a click box on each of the slides showing selected answers that jumped users to the appropriate response slide (correct or not correct)

That’s really all there is to it. While the task may seem daunting, it literally took me 30 minutes to record and produce my sample project. Depending on your comfort level with Captivate, and the number of questions and possible answers you need, it will likely take you a bit longer to achieve similar results. However, I hope I have demonstrated that the effect is possible.

If you would like to download the project file (CP) I created for this lesson, click here.   

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