Category: e-learning

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Adobe Captivate: Adding Videos to eLearning

by Kevin Siegel Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn View our videos on YouTube

You can add several types of video into a Captivate project, including AVI, MOV, and Flash Video (FLV or F4V). To insert a video, open or create a Captivate project and then choose Video > Insert Video to open the Insert Video dialog box. 

Adobe Captivate: Insert Video dialog box.

You have two choices when inserting video: Event Video (typically video that is expected to play on only one slide) or Multi-Slide Synchronized Video (video that is expected to play across multiple slides). Most developers elect to use Event Video since videos that are confined to a single slide are easier to control.

After you've made a decision between Event Video or Multi-Slide Synchronized Video, the next big decision is to load the video from a file that is already on your computer (by selecting On your Computer), or link to the video that is stored on a server (by selecting Already deployed to a web server, Adobe Media Streaming Service, or Flash Media Server).

If you choose On your Computer (which most developers do), you simply Browse to the video that's on your computer or network drive, open it, and the video will be inserted onto the slide. From there, you use the Properties Inspector to set the video's timing and other attributes. It's a clean process with one major drawback: when you publish an eLearning lesson containing video, the resulting output could be quite large. And large lessons take longer to open and view over the Internet than smaller lessons that don't contain video.

Instead of embedding the video in a Captivate project, you lower the size of the project and decrease load times for learners accessing your published content by linking to the videos that are stored on a server.

If you have a web server, you can upload the videos to the server in advance and simply copy/paste the URL to the video into the URL field. Your corporate IT can set you up with a web server or, if you're up to the challenge, you can create your own web server using free media server software.

If you don't have a web server, your server cannot handle large amounts of traffic, or you simply don't want to create your own server, a media service could be the way to go. Generally speaking, media services are servers available in the cloud that house your videos for you. When a learner watches your eLearning content and comes across a video you've added to a slide, the video is streamed from the media server to your learner. There are several pay-as-you-go companies/websites that provide media servers including Adobe Media Streaming Service, Wowza, Subsonic, and Plex.

I'd love to get feedback from you about this topic. I've created a quick poll that asks how you're using video in eLearning and, just as important, where you're storing the videos. You can take the poll here.

See also: Adobe Media Server 5 With Kevin Towes and a review on five of the top-selling media servers.

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Looking for instructor-led training on Adobe Captivate? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Captivate classes.
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Adobe Captivate 8: Watch for Large Cache Folders

I've written about Captivate's Cache folder in the past. In case you aren't familiar with it, a cached version of your project is created in the Cache folder every time you save your Captivate project. The cached projects can make the process of opening, saving and working on a project faster than what one experienced with older versions of Captivate. However, with Captivate 8, developers are complaining about the increased size of the Cache folder.

Those folks aren't imagining things. It looks like Captivate is creating more folders of each project than before. Adobe is aware of the problem and you can expect an update to Captivate that will fix the issue. In the meantime, you should manually backup your projects (to an external drive) and clear the Cache folder at least once a month (by clicking the Clear Cache button).

Adobe Captivate: Clear Cache button

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PowerPoint: Another Character Challenge Submission

by AJ Walther Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn
 
A few weeks ago I presented the Character Challenge and asked readers to send in their PowerPoint-created eLearning characters. Our one brave submission was from Tracey Stokely. But, her creativity got someone else's creative wheels turning. I received one more submission that I'd like to share this week.
Thanks Ricardo Llanes for this awesome submission!
 
Character challenge entry. 

And, in case you missed it, here's Tracey Stokely's submission from last week. 

Character challenge entry.

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If you love AJ's articles, you'll love her Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning & Presentations mini course.
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Fundamentals of Designing and Developing Cost-Effective eLearning

When: September 22-25
Where: McCormick Place, Chicago (Part of the Online Learning Conference Certification program)

There are multiple tools available that will let you create compelling eLearning content including Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, TechSmith Camtasia Studio, and Adobe Presenter. But which tool is the best, most affordable option for your needs?

Once you select your eLearning tool, what's next? How do you get started creating your first eLearning content? Once you start, how long is it going to take you to finish? What's the real cost for your effort? Are there hidden costs? How will you be able to measure the effectiveness of your eLearning?

Join IconLogic's Kevin Siegel for an intense, tool-agnostic, hands-on workshop where you'll get a jump start on  building your first eLearning course.

Among other things, you'll learn:

  • Strategies for building effective eLearning
  • The eLearning development process
  • How to create an eLearning script and/or storyboard
  • How to get started on creating eLearning content using Captivate, Storyline, Camtasia or Presenter

More information.

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eLearning: Articulate Storyline and Microsoft PowerPoint

by Kevin Siegel Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn View our videos on YouTube

If Microsoft PowerPoint is your starting point for developing eLearning content, you can reuse that content in any of the top eLearning development tools including Adobe Presenter, Adobe Captivate, and TechSmith Camtasia Studio.

This week I'm going to show you how to use Articulate Storyline and PowerPoint to jump start the eLearning development process.

You can either create a new Storyline project using a PowerPoint presentation or import PowerPoint content into an existing Storyline project. In the image below, notice that there is an Import PowerPoint menu item on Storyline's Welcome screen.

Articulate Storyline: Import PowerPoint

After clicking Import PowerPoint and opening the PowerPoint presentation, the Import Slides dialog box opens. You can select all of the PowerPoint slides or pick and choose. Once you've selected the slide(s) you want, click the Import button.

Articulate Storyline: Import PowerPoint dialog box.

The PowerPoint slides are imported into the Storyline project as Storyline slides and you'll end up in Story View.

Articulate Storyline: PowerPoint Slides in Story View

Unlike Camtasia (where the presentation becomes one, uneditable video), or Captivate (where each slide is converted to an uneditable video), opening a Storyline slide reveals an interesting possibility: the original PowerPoint slide objects can be manipulated. For instance, in the image below, the PowerPoint text box says "To continually develop…"

Articulate Storyline: Content from PowerPoint before editing.

Without leaving Storyline, I was able to edit the text in the image below to "To usually develop…"

Articulate Storyline: Content from PowerPoint after editing

The ability to edit the PowerPoint content directly in Storyline is awesome. However, there is no link between Storyline and the original PowerPoint presentation. If your subject matter expert is still making changes to the original PowerPoint presentation, you won't see those changes in Storyline (moreover, you'll have to make those changes in Storyline yourself). If the PowerPoint presentation is a moving target, you might want to wait until all of the PowerPoint edits are final prior to importing the presentation into Storyline. As I showed you last week, a Captivate project and original PowerPoint presentation can be linked. If the PowerPoint presentation is updated, you can easily get those updates to appear in Captivate. You might want to keep this fundamental difference between Captivate and Storyline in mind when choosing between the two development tools.

According to Articulate Support, here are some other limitations you should keep in mind when importing PowerPoint content:
  • Imported text may not look the same way it does in PowerPoint. You may find some variations in font size, line spacing, alignment, colors, or bullets.
  • Presentation size: If your PowerPoint presentation is a different size than your Storyline project, you may need to make adjustments to the size and placement of objects after importing them. Or, you can change your story size to match your PowerPoint presentation before importing.
  • Embedded fonts: Storyline doesn't support embedded fonts from PowerPoint. If a font used in the PowerPoint presentation isn't installed on your computer, Storyline will apply the default Articulate font to the imported text.
  • Animations and slide transitions: PowerPoint entrance and exit animations are supported in Storyline and will be imported–though some will be converted to Fade animations. Similarly, some PowerPoint slide transitions are supported in Storyline, while others get converted to Fade transitions. Emphasis animations and motion paths aren't supported and won't be imported into Storyline.
  • SmartArt Graphics will be imported as images.
  • Tables will be imported as images.
  • Equations will be imported as images.
  • Slide numbers won't be imported into Storyline.
  • 3-D rotation: Objects with 3-D rotation will be imported as images without 3-D rotation.
  • GIF images: Animated GIFs will be imported as static images.
  • Line thicknesses: Border and line widths may appear slightly different in Storyline.
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Looking for instructor-led training on Articulate Storyline? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Storyline classes.
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Microsoft PowerPoint: Character Challenge

by AJ Walther Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn
 
A few weeks ago I presented a Character Challenge and asked readers to send in their PowerPoint-created eLearning characters. A round of applause for Tracey Stokely's awesome customized character!
 
Tracey Stokely character
 
Last time I submitted a before and after of IconLogic's Kevin Siegel. This time I decided to go ahead and play my own game and create my own eLearning character self-portrait. Ta-da!
 
eLearning: AJ as a character.
 
If you were feeling shy, but Tracey has inspired you, feel free to keep sending along those character submissions! 

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If you love AJ's articles, you'll love her Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning & Presentations mini course.
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eLearning: Adobe Captivate and Microsoft PowerPoint

by Kevin Siegel Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn View our videos on YouTube

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Wait… before answering that, let's rework that classic question with this: what comes first, the eLearning or the PowerPoint presentation?

When developing eLearning, the content is often created in Microsoft PowerPoint first. I'm not going to get into what it takes to create visually compelling PowerPoint presentations (we have a mini course for that). Instead, I'm going to show you how to take existing PowerPoint content and quickly re-purpose it for eLearning.

Earlier this year I wrote an article teaching you how to take PowerPoint content and create eLearning using either TechSmith Camtasia Studio or Adobe Presenter. Over the next two weeks, I'm going to show you how to use your PowerPoint content in Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline.

Adobe Captivate and PowerPoint

You can import PowerPoint slides into an existing Captivate project or create a new project that uses the PowerPoint slides. During the import process, Captivate includes the ability to create a link between a Captivate project and PowerPoint presentation. Using this workflow, any changes made to the original PowerPoint presentation can be reflected in the Captivate project.
 
Note: Microsoft PowerPoint must be installed on your computer before you can import PowerPoint presentations into Captivate. Also, the ability to import PowerPoint presentations isn't new. In fact, Captivate has supported PowerPoint imports for years. If you're using a legacy version of Captivate (even version 4 and 5), the steps below will work for you just fine.

To create a new project from a PowerPoint presentation, choose File > New Project > Project From MS PowerPoint and open the PowerPoint presentation. 

The Convert PowerPoint Presentations dialog box opens, offering a few controls over how the presentation is imported.

Adobe Captivate: Advanced Slide Options. 

The On mouse click option adds a click box to each Captivate slide. The other available option, Automatically, results in Captivate slides that, when viewed by a learner, automatically move from slide to slide every three seconds. At the lower right of the dialog box, there are options for High Fidelity and Linked.

Adobe Captivate: High Fidelity and Linked options. 

During a standard import process, PowerPoint pptx presentations are first converted to the ppt format and then converted to SWF. If you select High Fidelity, the import process takes native pptx files directly to Captivate SWF (the ppt conversion is skipped). This option, which is available only in Captivate for Windows, results in the best-looking content in Captivate, but it takes much longer to complete the import process. 

 
The Linked option creates a link between the PowerPoint presentation and the new Captivate project. The link allows you to open the PowerPoint presentation from within Captivate. Additionally, any changes made externally to the PowerPoint presentation can be reflected in the Captivate project with a few mouse clicks. 
 
After the PowerPoint slides are imported into Captivate, you can add Captivate objects such as captions, highlight boxes, or animations. 
 
Adobe Captivate: Imported PowerPoint Presentation
 
If you need to edit the PowerPoint slides, choose Edit > Edit with Microsoft PowerPoint > Edit Presentation. The Presentation will open in a window that can best be described as a union between Captivate and PowerPoint. If you've used PowerPoint before, you will recognize the familiar PowerPoint interface. 

There are two buttons you wouldn't normally see if you opened the presentation directly in PowerPoint: the Save and Cancel buttons at the upper left of the window. Once you have edited the PowerPoint slides, click the Save button and the changes will appear in the Captivate project.

Adobe Captivate: Save and Cancel

If the PowerPoint presentation has been edited outside of Captivate, (perhaps your subject matter expert is adding or removing content from the presentation) you can still get the changes. Choose Window > Library. On the Library, notice that there is a Status column.

A red button will indicate that the PowerPoint slides within the Captivate project are no longer synchronized with the PowerPoint presentation. A simple click on the red button will update the Captivate slides.

Adobe Captivate: Not in synch with source.  

Next week: Articulate Storyline and PowerPoint.

 

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Looking for instructor-led training on Adobe Captivate? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Captivate classes.
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PowerPoint & eLearning: Create Your Own Characters

by AJ Walther Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn

In my three-hour mini session on Optimizing PowerPoint for eLearning and Design, I discuss how to create your own eLearning characters using PowerPoint. Generally I get a few excited students who seem up to the challenge, but most students decide that it's a neat trick that they're going to go ahead and skip. I was happy to see that Tom Kuhlmann recently posted a couple of how-to videos over on the Articulate blog about how to create your own eLearning characters in PowerPoint. I was not alone in creating my own PowerPoint eLearning characters! The how-to videos are good, so I'd encourage you to go check them out. Additionally, I'd like to add some of my own tips about how I create my characters.

Start with a photo. This isn't a terribly difficult task, but you will need to ensure you won't get into any hot water with regard to copyright. Do you remember the Shepard Fairey Obama poster incident? You probably are not creating eLearning characters that will be as high profile as Fairey's Obama, but with so many ways to avoid getting into the copyright soup, why risk it? Here are some options:

In the steps below, I'll create an eLearning character based on this image:

   

  1. Insert the photo on a PowerPoint slide as large as you can. This will help with creating details.
  2. Look at the photo as if it is comprised of layers. Start drawing whatever layer is furthest back. In this photo, for example, if I am leaving out the background wall, the face would be furthest back. The shirt, tie, suit, hair, and facial features would all be layered on top of that
  3. Don't waste time trying to guess skin tones…use a color picker instead to speed up your workflow. Yes, nearly all skin colors will vary from pixel to pixel, but pick your color from a mid-range color of the face. Remember, this is a simplified illustration, not a photo-realistic reproduction. I use Color Cop, but a simple Google search will pull up lots of suitable free options.
      
  4. Use the Curve tool to draw your shapes by tracing over the object in the photo. The Scribble tool will work as well, but will likely lead to more work, as shapes will typically be bumpier and will require more point editing.
      
  5. Don't worry about perfection–you can always go in and edit points (right-click the shape and choose Edit Points).
      
  6. Every time you draw a shape, make sure to name it on the Selection Pane. (To view the Selection Pane, select Home > Arrange > Selection Pane. To rename items on the selection pane, click to select and then click again. Naming items will help you keep them straight.)
  7. Remember, you are working backward starting with the shape that is furthest from you. This means that every time you draw a shape it will be covering the next shape you want to draw. This is where the Selection Pane becomes very useful. Click the eyeball next to your named item on the selection pane to hide the shape. You'll be able to see the photo again, trace your next shape, and then view the shape that was in your way again to check your progress.
      
  8. Group small details as you go. Eyes, for example, have many small details that could easily get "lost." After you have drawn all of the eye's elements, group them together to fix this.
     
      
  9. Speaking of small details, zoom in when working with these tiny details to give you more control and make your life easier.
  10. Use textured fills, gradients, transparencies, and effects where appropriate. For my example I added a textured fill (with an altered color) for the tie, a gradient effect to the nose, shapes of varying transparency to add subtle face contours, and small shadows to the shirt collar and suit lapels.
     
     
      
  11. When you're finished, select all of the shapes, group them ([Ctrl] [G]), and save the group as a picture (right-click > Save As Picture).

Here is my finished product:

 

Character Challenge

It's your turn! Create your own character in PowerPoint and send it to me. It could be a self-portrait or that of a friend, colleague, or loved one. Even better–send me the original photo as well for a fun before and after. We'll feature your creations here next week.

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If you love AJ's articles, you'll love her Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning & Presentations mini course.

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eLearning: Creating Fresh, New eLearning–Backward!

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn

So you've been asked to create a snazzy, new eLearning lesson, but the raw material you receive from your subject matter expert (SME) is not ideal. Maybe you are given content that's just not ready to be used for eLearning. Perhaps your subject matter expert has provided content that's so technical that the intended audience won't be able to understand it. Maybe the audio you've been given is an exact match for the slides in the PowerPoint deck (something that's an absolute no-no).

In these situations, moving forward and creating eLearning may be exactly the wrong direction to go. To create meaningful, effective eLearning, you may need to go backward and start with some basic instructional design.

Every course that you create should start with this basic question: Who are you training to do what, under what circumstances, and how well?

When we ask a SME, who is an expert on the subject, but not a professional trainer nor a writer, to write training objectives, we are likely to get something like this:

Going forward, ABC Company has a need to enhance the development points and key measurables supporting full implementation of our widget fulfillment mode operationals.

Reading this tells me just one thing: It's going to be a long afternoon.

Here's an idea for getting the training objectives from the SME: have the SME write the quiz. Make sure the SME knows to include only the most important points from the lesson. Ask for something on the order of 10 questions for a 5- or 6-minute unit. (A quiz of no more than 10 questions is an ideal length for an eLearning lesson that plays for approximately 5 minutes.) Once you receive the quiz from the SME, review it with the SME to make sure it contains the most important points of the lesson, that you understand all the points, and that no major points were missed.

Then shamelessly design the training to teach to the quiz. Teaching to the quiz is considered bad form in the world of K12 education. But in the workplace, it may just be the best way to get the learners from point A to point Z.

As you now review that PowerPoint deck the SME provided, or chug through the 2-hour webinar, grab those slides and chunks of phrasing that address the quiz points. And put your eLearning together from there.

Ironically, instead of taking the SME's materials and moving forward, we are now actually starting at the very end–the quiz–and building from there.

Try this on one of your up-coming projects, and let me know how it goes!

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If you love Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Check out some of Jennie's mini courses.