by Jennie Ruby, CTT, COTP
The Assessment recording mode in Adobe Captivate creates a step-by-step software simulation that is intended to function as a test. It is part of the three-part formal software lesson: Demo, then Training (practice), then Assessment (test). The Assessment requires the learner to click through the steps without any hints, and it is set up to report each correct click as a point. But if you actually put a Quiz Results slide at the end of your Assessment and try out your test, you’ll find that you get 100% every time!
“Well, of course!” you might say, “You know all of the answers, because you are the one who created the lesson!”
And if you said that, you’d have a good point. However, you’d be wrong.
The reason you get 100% every time is that by default, each click box in the Assessment simulation is set to Infinite Attempts. You can click the wrong thing two, three, five times—and you’ll get a Failure caption every time. But the lesson will not proceed until you finally click the correct command, whereupon you receive a point for your correct answer, and the assessment proceeds. Voila. 100%.
To get an accurate score on an Assessment simulation, you have to set each click box—the clickable object that makes the software simulation advance—to allow only 1 attempt.
Select the click box and, on the Properties Inspector > Actions tab, deselect the Infinite Attempts checkbox. Then set the No. of Attempts to 1.
Still on the Actions tab, in the Reporting section, select Include in Quiz. Assign the number of Points you want (1 works fine), and then select Add to Total.
You’ll need to make these changes or ensure that these settings are consistent throughout your entire project. For the Reporting settings, once you have set them for one click box, you can use the fly-away menu next to the Reporting heading to update all of your click boxes:
In the Properties > Actions tab, to the right of the Reporting heading, click the fly-away menu (shown in the highlight box below) and choose Apply to all objects of this type.
The Reporting settings are applied to all of the click boxes in your project.
For the number of attempts, however, you’ll need to navigate to each and every slide and set that manually. Ugh. But here is a tool that will help: Advanced Interactions (which help you navigate to each click box in turn). One or two clicks per checkbox (depending on the point value you want to set), and you’re done.
Make sure you have set all of your click boxes to be included in quiz. Then, access the Advanced Interactions window to help ease the pain of setting them all to one attempt via Project > Advanced Interactions.
Ensure that the View filter is set to All Scorable Objects. If necessary, click the black twisty triangle to expand the list of scorable objects on each slide. In the Advanced Interactions window, click the first line that says Click box.
You are navigated to that slide in the Filmstrip, and the click box on the slide is selected. On the Properties Inspector, deselect the Infinite Attempts checkbox. Repeat for each click box in the project.
In your Quiz Preferences > Settings, ensure that Show Score at the End of the Quiz is selected. Then make sure the Quiz Results slide is at the end of your Assessment project. Preview the Assessment, purposely get a few clicks wrong, and you will see an accurate score at the end of the assessment.
Want to report the results? We cover how to set up a “quiz” such as this one as a SCORM-compliant content package, and how to upload it to your LMS, in our Advanced Adobe Captivate class. Interested in other classes? We've got a huge catalog of courses all online, all 100% hands-on and interactive.
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Jennie Ruby, CTT, COTP, is a veteran eLearning developer, trainer, and author. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer and Certified Online Training Professional. She teaches both classroom and online courses, and has authored courseware, published training books, and developed content for countless eLearning projects. She is also a publishing professional with more than 30 years of experience in writing, editing, print publishing, and eLearning.
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