The Logical Blog by IconLogic

Adobe Captivate: System Date Variables

by Lori Smith 

 

Adobe Captivate has provided System Variables for years. In fact, there are more than 70 Captivate System Variables in Captivate version 8. Unfortunately, many developers don't use System Variables because they either don't know about them or don't know how to use them.

This week I'm beginning a series of articles that will take you through Captivate's System Variables, one group at a time. First up, Date variables, which are a subset of the System Information variables (variables that pull their information from the learner's computer when a Captivate lesson runs).

 
 
The table below lists the different date variables available in Captivate.

 
 
For this example, let's say that today's date is Sunday, November 17, 2002. If you need  to build your own date string that showed only the month and the year (11/2002), you could simply insert a text caption like this:


 
If I were to use the System Variable cpInfoCurrentDay in a text caption, the learner would see the word "Sunday" on the slide if it's Sunday, "Friday" if it's Friday, and so on. But what if I want the learner to see the current day of the week in a specific format ("Sun" for Sunday; "Fri" for Friday, etc.)? Because there isn't a System Variable for that, I need to step in and create a user variable along with a little Advanced Action.

First I created a user variable called myDayOfTheWeek. (You can create a user variable via Project > Variables.) Then I created an Advanced Action named DayOfTheWeek.

In the image below, notice that I used the provided cpInfoCurrentDay System Variable in the If area of the Action and compared it to 1 using the is equal to comparison.


 
I used the myDayOfTheWeek user variable in the Actions area (shown above). 

My Advanced Action contains seven Decision Blocks, one for each day of the week (some of the Decision Blocks are shown in the image above where you see blue word "Sunday").

Here's the recipe I used when I created each of those Decision Blocks.


 
I used the myDayOfTheWeek user variable in a text caption and that was that.

 
 
As far as I'm concerned, the most interesting date variable iscpInfoCurrentLocaleDateString. For my computer, it displays November 17, 2002. But for my friend's computer, the same lesson displays Sunday November 17, 2002. Curious as to why, I accessed my computer's time and date setting (Control Panel > Clock, Language, and Region > Change date, time, or number formats). My settings looked like this:


 
I changed my Long date to this:


 
... and my Captivate lesson displayed the date as Sunday, November 17, 2002.

See also: Adobe Captivate's System Time Variables
 

***

Looking to learn Adobe Captivate? We offer several Captivate classes. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your training requirements.

Writing & Grammar: Memory Aids for Grammar--And a Few More for Spelling

by Jennie Ruby 

 

"My 8th grade English teacher taught me this little gem many years ago" says Laura Witte:

 

"Never use a preposition to end a sentence with!"

Witte also gives us this one:

"Off of sounds like you're stuttering. (Just off will suffice.)"

Both of these are about that perennial problem of ending a sentence with an UNNECESSARY preposition, which so many people misremember as "never end a sentence with a preposition under any circumstances." The true test is whether you can delete the unneeded preposition, and both of Witte's examples beautifully illustrate that concept. If you delete with and of, the sentences retain their meaning. Contrast those with instances where the ending preposition is actually part of the verb, completing and changing its meaning:

I didn't need the receipt, so I threw it out.

Here, if you delete out, you change the meaning. So just keep the preposition at the end. Years ago, teachers would have us revise the order of a sentence this way in order to avoid ending with a perfectly fine, necessary preposition:

That is not the ladder you are supposed to go up.

That is not the ladder up which you are supposed to go.

If you find yourself in this sort of mess, a better answer is to recast the sentence as

That is not the ladder you are supposed to use.

Here are some more memory aids for spelling, along with warm memories of the teachers who gave them to us.

Krista Wolter writes: Seeing the posts from others reminded me of one from high school. Our chemistry teacher taught us "there is a rat in separate." He took points off your lab work if you spelled separate wrong. I still think of him when I type that word.

Sherrie L. Trechel says, "I am a fan of a memory aid a friend told me about long ago for loose vs. lose":

 "You can't lose your nose."

And I really related to Elaine Study's experience described here, when she remembered that

"There are 3 e's buried in cemetery."

Elaine said "I will never forget a few years ago I was watching the TV show 'JAG' with my husband and the scene location printed on the screen was "___________ Cemetary.

"I was so outraged at the misspelling on a national TV show that I kept chanting at the screen, "There are 3 e's buried in cemetery!  There are 3 e's buried in cemetery! My husband's response was, "I didn't know that."'

And that reminded me of one of my own tricks--how to remember the difference between stationery and stationary.

"Stationery is about envelopes." (e)

"When you are stationary, you are standing still." (a)

Send me more if you've got them..

 

***

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

Adobe RoboHelp: Embed a YouTube Video

by Willam Van Weelden  

 

Last week, Kevin taught you how to embed YouTube videos in your eLearning projects. This week I'm going to keep with the YouTube theme and show you how you can embed YouTube content into your RoboHelp project.

1. Go to YouTube and locate the video you'd like to use.
2. Click the Share button below the video.
   
3. Go to the Embed tab and copy the embed code.
   
4. In RoboHelp, open a topic and switch to HTML mode.
5. Paste the embed code in the topic.
   
6. In the src attribute, type http: in front of the url.
   
7. Save your topic and generate your output.
   

See also: Embedding Captivate HTML5 output in a RoboHelp project.

***

Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

eLearning: The Origins of a Training Methodology

by Kevin Siegel   

 

I've been creating eLearning since the early 1990s. Back then, eLearning (or E-Learning, pick your style) was known as CBT (Computer Based Training).

My first attempts at creating software video training was with a program called CameraMan. That program was ahead of its time, allowing you to capture your mouse actions, add captions and audio, and then publish into a video format that could be viewed on most computers. It was awesome software for the times but crashed a lot and had very few options. It was pretty much a record-pray-publish kind of tool.

When TechSmith released Camtasia I gave CameraMan the heave-ho and began producing slicker content in half the time. Then RoboDemo came out (RoboDemo later became Adobe Captivate) and I was quick to add that to my toolbox.

Today you have plenty of options when it comes to developing eLearning, including Camtasia, Captivate, Storyline, and two Presenters (one from Adobe, the other from Articulate).

While developing content for my Getting Started with eLearning mini course, I became curious about the origins of eLearning. As I mentioned above, I began developing eLearning 20 years ago. Surely that makes me one of the more senior eLearning developers around. It turns out I'm am just a young pup when it comes to eLearning. In fact, at a recent conference I met a person who said she started developing eLearning 30 years ago. 30 years ago? Wait, wouldn't that be the 1980s? Sure computers were around in the 80s... I was an early Mac adopter and I remember PCs with early versions of Windows (heck, I used DOS and floppy disks when they were still floppy). Those early computers struggled to do just about anything beyond word processing. How could anyone have developed eLearning on those early systems?

At the same conference, I met another person who said he was creating eLearning in the late 1970s. And that got me thinking... just how far back does eLearning go? And who was the first person or company to provide eLearning?

It turns out that eLearning really got going in 1953 when the University of Houston offered televised college credit classes. A few years later, the first adaptive teaching system (named SAKI) went into commercial production. Basically, with this system, the course got more challenging as learners improved.

When I was creating eLearning in the 1990s, the eLearning content I published consisted of video files that were huge. The files wouldn't fit on a floppy disk and computer hard drives weren't very big. Thankfully, DVDs were available (expensive, but available). The content I published was burned to a DVD, and then I hired a DVD replicating service to mass produce my content.

With the ever-growing popularity and power of the Internet and cloud computing, the need for DVDs went the way of the dinosaur. While many people think the Internet got started in the late 1990s, it came along far earlier. In 1969 the U.S. Department of Defense commissioned the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), which became the Internet as we know it today.

In the 1970s, a company started delivering live training over corporate networks in what they dubbed "virtual classrooms." And in the 1980s, the first CBTs were rolled out. In my discussion with the conference attendees I mentioned earlier, they revealed that those first CBTs were little more than teaching machines. And while they were limited in scope, they were nevertheless CBTs.

What's your earliest memory of eLearning? What tools did you use back then? And when did you first notice eLearning replacing the term CBT? Feel free to post your experience below as a comment.

***
If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn more about the history of eLearning, the infographic below is a great place to start.

Source: Roberta Gogos, Social Media & Content Marketing Consultant.

Localization: Training and Development in New Zealand

by Jen Weaver

As cold weather looms in the United States, our friends in New Zealand are preparing for the summer season. Let's take a warm excursion to the Southern Hemisphere to explore some common cultural facts about New Zealanders and their expectations when it comes to training and development.

New Zealand Trivia:

1. True or False? New Zealand was the first country to grant women the right to vote.
2. True or False? New Zealanders refer to themselves as "Kiwis."

Tips for Training & Development in New Zealand¹:

• Truth is based on objective facts; emotions and hype are not deemed appropriate in business presentations. Stick to the facts when developing your training materials.
• Business interactions are more formal until credibility and rapport are established.
• Despite their proximity, do not confuse Aussie culture with that of the Kiwis. They are entirely different people groups.
• The Maori tribespeople are the earliest known inhabitants of New Zealand, and Maori is still one of the official languages. But with English being the other official language, most Maoris speak English fluently.
• Kiwi executives value individual achievement and are internally motivated. As such, many experience anxiety regarding professional growth or pending deadlines.
• Expertise is greatly valued, so be sure to communicate your corporate and personal achievements to demonstrate aptitude in the subject matter you're training.
• Tardiness is a serious faux pas; even social events start on time.
• A first-name basis is common in New Zealand business interactions, but wait to refer to your counterparts by their first names until invited to do so-or at least until they set an obvious informal tone in your interactions.

Trivia Answer from Above:

1. True. In 1893.
2. True, and the kiwi--the flightless bird, not the fruit--has become a national emblem.

References:¹Morrison, Terri, & Conaway, Wayne A. (2006). Kiss, bow, or shake hands (2nd ed.). Avon: Adams Media.

Developing international training and development materials? Contact Jen at Carmazzi Global Solutions. And if you love Jen's articles, check out her new Localization mini courses.

Microsoft PowerPoint: Create and Use Chart Templates

by AJ Walther  

 

Do you work for an organization that uses many charts? Do all of those charts need to be formatted to match specific corporate branding? Does this take you ages? Utilizing PowerPoint's custom Chart Templates might just save you a lot of time.

 

Create a Chart Template

1. Insert a chart in PowerPoint
2. Format the chart to reflect your company's branding guidelines.
   
3. Ensure the chart is selected (it will have a gray border) and choose Chart Tools Design > Save As Template.
   
4. Give the chart template a name. (PowerPoint will automatically save the chart template where it needs to go.)
5. Repeat this process for all charts that need a template. (You won't be able to apply a chart template to a different kind of chart, so you'll need to do this for every type of chart you plan to use.)

Apply a Saved Chart Template

1. Select a chart that requires your corporate formatting.
2. From the Ribbon, choose Chart Tools Design > Change Chart Type.
   
3. From the Change Chart Type dialog box, select theTemplates folder from the categories at the left.
   
4. From the My Templates area, hover over each chart to view its chart name.
5. Choose your desired chart template and click the OK button.

You might have to do some additional formatting based upon the amount of information in your chart, but overall this process should save you a lot of design time.

Share a Chart Template With Your Team

There are a few ways that you could distribute your chart template to others on your team. Here is one of the easiest ways:

1. Send a presentation to everyone on your team that would need to utilize the chart template. (Keep in mind that the template needs to includes one properly formatted chart of every type your company may need to use.)
2. Instruct your team to follow the instructions above to save the Chart Templates to their systems.

And that's it... everyone should now have readily available chart templates on their systems.

 

***

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

Adobe Captivate: Embedding YouTube Videos

by Kevin Siegel   

 

If you need to include YouTube videos in your Captivate eLearning project, the traditional technique was to insert a click box or button on a slide and, on the Properties Inspector, use the Open URL or File action to target the video's URL.

 

When the learner clicks the click box or button, the URL action will take the learner to the YouTube video in a web browser window.

The URL action works wonderfully, but I recently had a student in one of my Captivate classes tell me that she needed to embed the YouTube video on her slide. (She needed to include the video with other slide objects and animations.) This is the perfect use case for the new YouTube Learning Interaction.

To embed a YouTube video on a Captivate slide, first go to YouTube and copy the URL for the video to your clipboard.

From within Captivate, open or insert a slide and choose Interactions > Learner Interactions.



From the Interactions dialog box, scroll down, select the YouTube interaction, and click the Insert button.





On the Configure Interaction dialog box, paste the URL you copied earlier into the Video URL area.

There are several options in the dialog box such as AutoPlay and Loop, but I think the coolest option is located in the lower left: Particular time in the Video.



Using this handy option, you can take learners to a specific time in the YouTube video. In the image above, I've specified that the learner should go directly to the 1 minute mark of the video.

After setting your options, click the OK button and a placeholder for the video will be added to the Captivate slide. You can use the Properties and Timing Inspectors to control the position and timing for the object just like any other slide object.



And that's it... if you preview the lesson in a web browser, you'll be able to test the link to the embedded YouTube video.

 

 

***

Looking for instructor-led training on Adobe Captivate? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Captivate classes.

Writing & Grammar: Memory Aids

by Jennie Ruby

A colleague wrote to me because she was trying to remember that little rhyme used by teachers to help us remember how to spell words with the letters e and i:

I before e, except after c

Or sounding like a, as in neighbor or weigh

Probably 40 years or more after learning this rhyme in elementary school, she still had it right. Of course, later in life we find out that things are a little more complicated than what we learned back then. As a copyeditor, I made up an additional sentence for the end of the rhyme:

Or certain weird words such as

Either, neither, seize, weird, and leisure

Well, okay, my additional sentence doesn't exactly rhyme, but at least it gets the job done.

My question for you this week is this: Do you remember other little rhymes, tricks, or memory aids for grammar and spelling from your school days? Please share them with the rest of us. We'll take a look, see if they need updating, see if they are still true, and see if we can still get use out of them long after we've been out of school.

***

Here are the results from last week's questions about spelling preferences: 

• Dialogue beat dialog
• Catalog beat catalogue
• Sync overwhelmingly beat synch (Kay Honaker pointed out that synch looks like it would rhyme with inch.)
• In a surprise upset, advisor beat adviser by a landslide.
• High-tech shut out hi-tec, with no one choosing the latter.
• Wi-fi was also a winner by a mile, but wifi did get a few votes, even though, as Kay Honaker commented, wifi looks like it should sound like wih-fee.

I like clear results, and the results among this newsletter's readers are quite clear. So add these spellings to your style guide and join the crowd!

 

***

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

Adobe eLearning User Group: DC, Maryland, and Virginia Meeting is Tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern.

Where: Adobe Headquarters, McLean VA.
When: November 12, 7 p.m. - 9 p.m., Eastern
Cost: Free!

Online via Adobe Connect: http://experts.adobeconnect.com/mdva/

Tonight's Agenda...

From Flying Bullets to Instructional Animations with Diane Elkins

Flying bullets were the height of fashion ... in 1997. And yet still they persist in some corporate learning, both in the classroom and online. So why is this much-maligned presentation technique still popular?

Come to this free event and join Diane Elkins, Artisan E-Learning, as she presents a case study of how an American Red Cross Disaster Services course moved from slides and slides of bullets to useful, engaging instructional animations. You’ll look at before-and-after slides that illustrate the transformation from text bullets to instructional animations. But more importantly, you’ll learn about some of the specific design techniques used in that transformation—techniques you can use yourself, even if you aren’t a graphic artist. Come see this DemoFest 2012 award-winning course!

In this session, you will learn:

• What the research says about using text, graphics, and animations

• How to analyze text-based content and determine the best visual approach

• When and how to apply instructional animations

• Common design pitfalls to avoid

Plus...

Networking & food! Come join us!

***

Diane Elkins leads Artisan E-Learning, a custom eLearning development company specializing in the use of rapid-development tools. Diane has been in the eLearning industry since 2001, speaks regularly at national conferences about eLearning, and is co-author of the popular E-Learning Uncovered book series.

Please park in the Adobe McLean parking garage. We will be on the fifth floor in room 500. Adobe will validate your parking there.

EMR Training: Are You HiTech?

by Megan Pitkin  

I have a quick story to tell, but first I need to introduce the following acronyms: EMR, EHR, and HITECH. Each acronym deals with the healthcare industry. EMR stands for Electronic MedicalRecord--a digital version of a patient's paper chart. An EMR can contain the complete medical and treatment history for a patient. EMRs and Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The act is designed to promote the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology.

According to MedicalRecords.com, "The government wants to shift the health industry into the digital age and has provided reimbursement incentives and an electronic medical records deadline for those who adopt electronic medical records. However, as with all government benefits, this electronic medical records mandate comes with strings attached. For those who do not meet the electronic medical records deadline for implementation, the government has laid out a series of penalties.

"For physicians who either have not adopted certified EHR / EMR systems or cannot demonstrate 'meaningful use' by the EMR deadline in 2015, Medicare reimbursements will be reduced."

To comply with the HITECH requirements, healthcare organizations are turning to EMR software. There are several vendors who create EMR software including McKesson, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, AllScripts, and Epic.

Healthcare organizations have an urgent need to get their trainers trained on the use of their selected EMR software. Those trainers will then need to go back and teach colleagues how to lead EMR classes. That's where my story begins.

I'm a professional nurse. In fact, 10 years ago I was a graduate nurse caring for inmates in a jail. When I documented something in patient charts, I used pen and paper, similar to just about everyone else in the healthcare industry.

What I couldn't imagine from my jail-house office was a decade later I would be successfully training a room full of surgeons on a new way to chart.

My journey into the classroom was as exciting as it was unexpected. One day I was a bedside nurse holding pressure on a post-angiogram patient, then I was on a plane bound for EMR training (having been told by my boss that my organization was going to convert to an EMR system... and soon).

I learned how to use the EMR software during a very intense training program and returned to work full of knowledge. It wasn't long before my boss dropped a bombshell... now that I knew the EMR software, I would be responsible for training our entire staff of internal trainers on a specific segment of the EMR software. Those trainers, in turn, would train the staff.

Great, just great. I knew how to use the EMR software, but I had zero experience as a trainer. How was I going to teach professional trainers how to teach? Did I mention I had no functional class outline or materials beyond multiple giant binders with vague scripts that couldn't possibly support a positive learning experience or provide realistic patient scenarios? To top it off, my first class was expected to be held very soon.

Do you think that I panicked? Absolutely! With little guidance or support, I meddled through and built a train the trainer class. During that initial development time, 15-hour days became the norm as I prepared for the class.

You can imagine how nervous I was as that first class began. The class was labelled a success. The training objectives were met. However, while my evaluations were good, I wasn't convinced the learners had gained enough knowledge to do their jobs confidently.

Eventually I scrapped the software vendor's suggested training format and lesson plans. I developed my own materials with visually appealing presentation files and clinically-accurate workflows. Last but not least, I revamped how I taught the class and how I engaged my learners.

After teaching the class with my revamped materials and techniques, I felt as though I transformed from drowning victim to professional swimmer. Not only was I pleased with the success of my customized approach to the training, the evaluations from the learners soared! Best of all, my lesson plans were requested andadopted by the original EMR vendor!

Over the coming weeks, I'll be sharing some of my secrets to successfully teaching colleagues how best to teach an EMR class. Along the way I'll also share some stories about what worked during EMR implementations and what didn't.

***
If your organization has tasked you with rolling out an EMR or EHR training program, don't panic. Check out Megan's live, online, and highly interactive Train the EMR Trainer class.