Adobe Captivate 4: Mastering Quiz Navigation Forward and Backward

by Kevin A. Siegel 

If you've added Question Slides to a Captivate simulation, you've likely come across two navigation issues that are tough to resolve. First, you test the quiz and, after answering all the questions, you can't get the pesky quiz to go backwards so you can review the answers. Second, if the project contains interactive objects (like buttons or click boxes), after clicking the object, you can't go back and click the object a second time. Even worse, you often times can't get to the slide at all (even if you click the Rewind button on the playbar). It's maddening I tell you!

There are two main reasons that projects with Question Slides end up with backward movement issues. The first problem you might be able to find and resolve on your own given time... but that second problem isn't so obvious. Read on...

First, if you want your users to be able to go backward and review the Questions in your quiz, you have to enable the backward movement feature.

1. Choose Quiz > Quiz Preferences
   
   
2. Select Settings from the Quiz category
   
   
3. From the Settings area, select Allow backward movement
   
   
   
   
4. Click OK 

Okay, so that takes care of the backward movement problem. But what about when users click on a button or click box in your lesson to jump to a slide, and then they can't get back to that slide. What's up with that? The slide in question wasn't a Question Slide. So why can't user's get back to it. The truth is, I see this kind of thing all of the time. And more times than not, here's what you can do to allow backward navigation to slides (specifically when you have slides with interactivity within the same project as Question Slides).

1. Right-click the interactive object on the slide (click box, button or even a Text Entry box)
   
   
2. On the Reporting tab, ensure none of the options are selected
   
   
   
   
3. Click OK
   
   Believe it or not, this simple step should resolve the issue. Why? If you enable Reporting for an object, the object basically makes its slide a Question Slide, even though the slide is not a traditional Question Slide (it doesn't even look like a Question Slide). Once a user clicks the object, the user has, in effect, answered a question (Reported a result). Once reported, the result can't be reported a second time and navigation backward becomes impossible or clunky (even if Allow backward movement is enabled).

 

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Comments

[Kara Todeschini]

Hi,

I have created a quiz in Captivate 4 but when I publish it, it gives me the message "You did not answer this question completely." Has anyone run into this before? It seems to work fine before I publish, but then won't allow me to answer the questions after publishing when this message appears.

Any input would be great!

Thanks,
Kara

[Bola]

Hello there. I have exactly the same problem as you have described and I have tried so many things to no avail. I have the 'Allow backward movement' box checked but when I go back, the program 'plays' forward. When I press back again, I cannot use the next or continue buttons (All my slides are quiz slides.) Please is there any way I can circumvent this problem?
Also, When I go back, I find that the clear button is redundant as it does not clear old options allowing me to choose a new option. When I set the number of attempts in the settings to a number above 1, I have to click that number of times to leave the slide I am on and when I come back, the option is still unavailable. Please help me look into this.

[Cathy]

I made a couple of changes to the Quiz Preferences section:

•Show score at the end fo the quiz
•Pass Fail options to 80%
•If passing grade, jump to "passing" slide
•If failing grade, jump to "failing" slide
•Added the certificate widget

After these changes were made, I tried to preview the quiz (Project, From this Slide, Next 5 slides) and the preview only shows a playbar and project by Captivate flashing with a strange noise. I removed all changes but continue to see the image when trying to preview.

Do you know what caused this? Can you tell me how to fix this? ?

[Richard Dine]

I have an even more basic question. I am using navigation buttons throughout my project but I do not seem to be able to add them to the quiz pages. There is of course a "back" button but I cannot add a "continue" button. Any advice? Thanks.

[Robert Panetti]

Hello, I am hoping you can assist with a problem I am having with Captivate 4. I have a course with several checkpoint questions at various points in the course and then a 10 question quiz at the end. I cannot seem to get the Quiz Results screen to exclude the checkpoint questions and just score the 10 question quiz. Each checkpoint question has Report answers deselected on the Reporting tab. I also deleted the default values for Objective ID and Interaction ID. They still are being counted in the results. Any idea how to fix this?

[Lori Smith]

Hi Kara,

The first thing to check is that you don't have any grayed checkmarks on object causing them to be pseudo checked and thus pseudo scoring. This always caused odd behavior. Go to Project->Advanced Interaction. If you have any grayed check marks, first click the middle box, then left, right and center again to turn off all the check marks on any object that is not supposed to be scorable.

In addition, you should check your quiz settings. Edit->Preferences->Quiz->Settings, Required: You may want to set it to something other than "Answer All - the user must answer every question to continue"

-- Lori

[Lori Smith]

Whoops, replied to Kara's old comment instead of you Robert. Sorry about that!

However, the same information applies. You should first check your Advanced Interaction screen and make sure nothing is reporting that shouldn't be. Next, you can change the checkpoint questions to have a point total of 0 (right click the question slide -> edit questions, Question tab). And, you can also change the question type from graded to survey (right click the question slide -> edit questions, Options tab, Type set to Survey).

-- Lori

[TLL]

I have another Captivate 4 quiz issue. I have a multiple choice question slide with correct and incorrect answer caption boxes built in. When I answer the question correctly, instead of displaying the correct answer message, it just jumps to the next slide. Show Correct Message on the options tab is checked. Any takers?

[Lori Smith]

Do you have an advanced option set for the correct answer? If so, you need to be sure to have the "show feedback message" checked there as well.

Also double check your advanced interaction screen. Even if nothing is set strangely for this question slide, if there are other grayed out checkboxes in the project, it could cause odd behavior.

Can you recreate this behavior or does it only happen on one slide in one project?

Another catch to be wary of is editing your file from a network drive. You should always have the .cp file on your harddrive when editing. Editing across the network can seem to work okay until suddenly one day it doesn't, your file is corrupt and can't be fixed.

[tjp0825]

I think my question builds off of Robert's 05/10/10 question. I'm using survey questions as review questions throughout a program that covers form descriptions/completion. The survey question slides are skipped. Here is a general order to my program:
- Document field descriptions reviewed (Next button appears after set time)
- Survey questions as review questions
- Feedback screen providing the correct answers to the Survey questions

These three items repeat a total of 5 times (there are 5 forms covered in the program). Whichever form I choose to review first, the Next button takes me to the first survey question...and I'm able to complete the Survey questions for that form, and then see the feedback screen. (Everything works as desired) The next button does not navigate correctly for any of the other documents.

I tried your suggestion to uncheck the gray checkmarks in the Advanced Interaction, and that didn't work.

Any ideas?

[Teresa]

Hi,

I have a problem with the certificate widget. I have an eLearning package whereby the user navigates through some learning slides and completes a quiz at the end from a question pool. If they do not pass then they are navigated back to the beginning of the learning and have to repeat the process.

When this happens and the quiz is retaken, the quiz summary slide displays the correct score and percentage. However the results on the certificate widget aggregate both attempts and the results show are incorrect. E.g. 1st attempt at quiz user gets 1 question from 5 correct - the quiz summary slide shows a percentage of 20% - the user is then directed to a slide which states they have failed the eLearning and they must repeat the learning - the user is automatically directed back to the first slide in the package. Once the user completes the quiz a second time with a score of 5/5 the summary slide shows as 2 attempts, 5 questions correct 100% (all correct so far)- the user is then directed to the certificate widget slide and the results shown are 120% (as it has added the first attempt to the second).

Is there any way to stop the certificate widget aggregating the scores of each attempt by the user?

Apologies for the long question!

[Mel]

Hi I have been haveing issues with retaking the quiz in captivate 4. When the quiz is taken and all answers are no correct, the user is given the option to retake the quiz via the 'Retake Quiz' button. Problem is when you click on the retake quiz button, it takes you back to the 1st question but all the tick boxes are greyed out and the page stuck. This does not allow the user to retake the quiz. It occurs randomly on all the questions or some. Please does any one know how to sort this issue out.

[Luisa]

Hi, I have created a quiz in captivate 4.0 with random question slides. When I publish, everything works fine up to the results screen. I have included a 'next' button in this screen, but when I try this button or try to exit out of the quiz , nothing happens and I have to close the window. Any ideas what I need to do to get this to work?

[Abhishek]

Hi I am working with Captivate 6. Our project has both End of Lesson knowledge check and a few checkpoint questions. While we want to make show the scores for End of Knowledge quiz, we do not want the score to be displayed for the checkpoint questions. However, currently even for checkpoint questions, it is showing the score. Any help on this will be really helpful.

[Kevin Siegel]

Hi Abhishek,

Cp6 has a new feature called Pretest Question Slide (available within the Quiz menu). The Pretest questions look like regular question slides. However, the results of these questions do not count against the total score.

[Robert Jones]

I have a problem with Captivate 4. When a user click the back button on a slide then returns to the original slide the short cut key in use on that slide stops working and scrolls between rewind and back buttons at the bottom of the slide and the user cannot proceed.

Doe anyone have any advice on this?