I recently had a student in my Captivate class ask if Captivate allowed for bookmarking (the ability for a user to return to a lesson at the exact spot where they left off). The answer is no. If a user closes the lesson and reopens it later, they'll find themselves back at the beginning of the lesson.
Unless… you upload your Captivate published SWFs into a Learning Management System (LMS). While Captivate does not provide bookmarking features that the user can control, Captivate is sending user feedback to the LMS. If the LMS supports bookmarking, the LMS will return the user to where they left off. Of course, the LMS must support bookmarking, which I've learned from experience is not necessarily the case.
Then the question came up: "What if I don't want Captivate to send the bookmarking information to my LMS. Can I disable this within Captivate?"
I responded with my own question: "If you could disable this communication between your LMS and Captivate, why would you. Why wouldn't you want your users to be able to resume the lesson where they left off?"
The answer: "I want my users to see the introductory screen every time they start the lesson. As it stands now, every time they return to the lesson, they see the last screen."
Personally, I'd leave things as they are and, on the last screen, add a button that says something like "Click here to take the lesson again" and branch the button back to the first slide in the project. However, since this person just wanted to stop the bookmarking all-together (and guessing that some of you might want to know how to do it to), I offer the following:
- Open a Captivate project that has been set up to post to an LMS
- Choose Quiz > Quiz Preferences
- Ensure Enable reporting for this project
- From the Advanced, LMS Customization Settings area at the bottom of the dialog box, click the Settings button
The LMS Customization Settings dialog box appears.
- Select Never send Resume Data
Note: By selecting this option, your user's activity in the course will not be reported to your LMS. Details such as the session bookmark, progress and question attempted will not be sent to the LMS. - Click OK
- Click OK
- Republish the project and upload the zipped assets to your LMS
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