Welcome to the eLearning tool slug-fest. In this corner, it's Adobe Captivate. Over there? It's Articulate Storyline. And because this isn't a two-tool fight, look over there and you'll see TechSmith Camtasia. Attend this power hour and see demonstrations of all three tools. If you'd like to follow-along with your instructor, install trial versions of Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and TechSmith Camtasia (Mac or PC). Watch as your instructor, a seasoned eLearning developer and certified online training professional, puts each of these tools through its paces, compares their strengths and weaknesses, and helps you pick the tool that is right for you!
If you'd like to attend this live, online class, you can sign up here: http://www.iconlogic.com/compare-elearning-tools.html
I’ve been teaching and developing projects in Adobe Captivate for years. My particular area of strength is advanced actions. Just when I think I know everything about Captivate, a seemingly teeny, tiny option gets added by the Adobe engineers and I end up looking silly.
Standard Actions, such as Show can be used to easily show a hidden object. The problem is that the project will continue playing after the action occurs (after the shape appears). If you wanted something else to happen while the learner is still on the slide (perhaps another object appearing), it’s too late because the learner has automatically been taken to the next slide after the hidden object appeared.
To get around the problem in the past, you needed to create an advanced action that showed the hidden object instead of using a standard action. Why would you need an advanced action for something so simple? Because the Continue Playing Project behavior does not automatically occur with advanced actions like it did with standard actions.
That was so yesterday! There is now one of those teeny, tiny deals I mentioned earlier on the Properties inspector: a simple checkbox on the Actions tab labeled Continue Playing the Project. It is checked by default so if you use a standard action to show an object, you’ll still end up on the next slide. However, if you want to keep the learner on the current slide, all you have to do is deselect Continue Playing the Project. (In the simple scenario I mentioned above, there’s no longer a need to create the advanced action.)
The Continue Playing the Project checkbox originally appeared in Captivate 9. I missed it. In prior versions, it wasn’t possible to stop a project from continuing to play if you used a standard action. Because Continue Playing the Project is selected by default in both Captivate 9 and 2017, it’s an easy option to overlook, especially if you’ve been developing in Captivate for years like me.
Though the Continue Playing the Project option means that you no longer need to create an advanced action for the behavior I’ve described above, you will still need to create advanced actions if you want an interactive object to perform multiple actions once clicked. If advanced actions have you a bit intimidated, join me for my Captivate Variable and Action Deep Dive series. The 101 class starts with the basics. As we move through 201, 301, and 401, we will continue to build your skills and practice with Captivate Variables and Advanced Actions.
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Lori Smith, COTP, is IconLogic's lead programmer and Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in Captivate. Lori has a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT as well as a Master’s in electrical engineering from George Mason University. She has been working in the field of software engineering for more than 20 years. During that time she worked as an embedded software engineer at Raytheon (E-Systems) and ARINC.
Which of the following statements do you think are true?
A. By 2019, 80% of ALL web traffic will be video.
B. 64% of customers say they are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video.
C. 59% of decision-makers would rather watch a video than read a blog or article.
If you said all three, you are correct (Source: Hubspot, 2017).
The impact of video is astounding... and growing! Whiteboard videos have proven to be especially attention-getting as they allow a story to unfold in front of your eyes on a blank canvas.
Why Whiteboard Animation Works
Whiteboard animation, or scribing, is a novel take on video that has been proven to be three times more likely to be shared than a talking head video. Scribing brings a message to life through visual metaphors, captivating the viewer and holding attention until the last scene plays out. Why?
Viewer Completion. One of the secrets of video scribing is the concept known to artists as “viewer completion.” When you see two circles and a curved lined, your mind instantly jumps to the conclusion that you’re seeing a human face. Your brain fills in the details, completing the image.
Viewer Anticipation. Scribe videos also kindle viewer anticipation by inviting the brain to speculate about what is being drawn. Anticipation creates surprise which then rewards the brain with dopamine. Viewer anticipation helps explain how mesmerizing whiteboard videos can be–it can be tough to tear your eyes away from them.
Scribes are Judged Differently
If you’ve ever tried to make your own professional video, you know how difficult it is to produce anything that resembles what a high-price videographer using professional equipment can create. The visual simplicity of whiteboard animations puts them in a category of their own and lets them be judged differently. On top of that, with today’s software, anybody can learn how to make a professional-looking scribe.
Watching a scribe is an immersive experience, which gives them great staying power. A scribe reveals information gradually, sparking curiosity and allowing information to be processed one small chunk at a time. When viewer anticipation and viewer completion kick in, the message is processed at a deeper level and the message is more likely to be retained.
The Data
Cognitive psychologist Richard E. Mayer established that combining images with a voiceover to be the most effective way of communicating information – 50-75% better, in fact. Three groups were studied:
Group 1 listened to the content.
Group 2 watched the content.
Group 3 listened and watched the content simultaneously.
The result was kind of a no-brainer: those in the Group 3 had more accurate recall and retained the information longer.
Mayer’s research also concluded that people learn best when corresponding words and pictures are presented closely together; people learn better from animation and narration than from animation and onscreen text, and people learn better when extraneous material is not included. (In other words, the simpler the better.) Does that sound familiar? These are pretty much the central principles of video scribing!
Scribe vs. Talking Head
Sparkol, makers of VideoScribe, sent 1,000 people a whiteboard animation and another 1,000 people a talking head video, both of which used the same audio file and provided the same content (a business coach making a pitch for new clients). After watching, viewers answered a set of questions that tested their comprehension, retention, enjoyment, and inclination to respond positively to the pitch.
The scribe video outperformed the talking head video in all tests.
Those who had seen the scribe performed better in four out of five memory tests. The scribe was three times more likely to be shared and more than twice as likely to be recommended. Twice as many scribe viewers said they would buy the service. The scribe video came out on top in all age brackets and for both sexes.
Examples
To see scribing in action, check out a few of these examples:
Geeky Girl Karin Rex is an online learning pioneer and whiteboard animation evangelist. Since 1989, Karin has owned Geeky Girl, LLC, a boutique learning organization, where she devotes her time to writing, course development (instructor led and eLearning), and teaching.
Karin has authored several technology books, including: Office 2010 Demystified (McGraw-Hill) and hundreds of user guides, reference manuals, and tutorials. She’s also developed an extensive number of learning programs for a wide variety of global clients.
Karin is a Certified Online Training Professional (COTP), certified synchronous facilitator, designer, and producer, with a master’s degree in professional writing. Additionally, Karin teaches undergraduate writing courses for Penn State University and is the Instructional Design Lead for InSync Training.
When teaching my students how to publish Articulate Storyline projects during my beginner class, I often get the following question:
Student: “How do I publish my project as a video (MP4)?”
Me: “You can’t.”
Cue the crickets along with disappointed comments in the chat pod, especially from Adobe Captivate users (Captivate has been able to publish projects as a video for years).
Why would a Storyline developer want to publish a project as a video (especially when you lose any interactivity you've built into the slides)? Video files are self-contained. They can be viewed on just about any device without the need for a web browser. You can email the video output to a colleague who does not have Storyline, so they can view your slides. And published videos can be uploaded into video streaming servers such as YouTube and Vimeo.
Given that publishing as a video has been a requested Storyline feature for some time, I’m happy to report that Articulate Storyline 360 now allows you to publish a single video of a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course.
There are some settings and best practice options in the Publish to Video dialog box we’ll discuss.
Under Size and Quality, there are a few choices:
Dimensions. This is where you can select a size for video from a drop-down menu. If video size is not a factor, you can go as high as full 1080p HD for nice quality.
You have two sliders for Video and Audio Quality that ranges from Low to Very High. There is of course a tradeoff between quality and file size. High is usually a good choice.
“Set the same volume level for all audio” makes all sounds volume consistent throughout the project. If you want to keep the volume the same as you originally had it in the Storyline project, deselect this option.
Prior to publishing, you can also control how the slides flow (or the Navigation). You can either follow the “next” button actions in your course, or show the slides sequentially based on their slide number (1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, and so on).
If you need to publish a course to video, I suggest that you duplicate the project and prepare a copy for video output that automatically goes through all content flow without missing main content stored in layers. You’ll likely need to adjust the Triggers so they execute automatically. For example, if a user needs to click a button to show a specific layer, you can adjust the Triggers so one layer shows when the timeline of a previous layer end.
Kal Hadi, COTP, is a Certified Adobe Instructor with CompTIA CTT+ credentials. He has over 15 years of experience in the field of computer graphics, imaging, and electronic publishing. He was recognized by Adobe as one of the top five trainers worldwide in 2009. He is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology Electronic Publishing graduate program. He is also the author of many books and papers in the fields of graphics and web publishing including IconLogic's Articulate Storyline books.
Happy Friday! Ok, maybe it's Friday when you're reading this, maybe it isn't. However, if it's not a Friday, let's pretend that it is.
You'd like your Adobe Captivate eLearning module to greet the learners with “Hello! It’s a lovely Friday to learn a little something. Let’s get started!”
Are you wondering how to get Captivate to perform this little bit of magic? You could simply write the words “Hello! It’s a lovely Friday…” into a Text Caption or Smart Shape. However, the learner would only be greeted correctly once out of every seven days.
Instead of manually typing the day, let Captivate share the information with your learners. Believe it or not, Captivate already knows how to get the information: via a System Variable called cpInfoCurrentDay.
If you wanted to have the day show up in a text caption, all you’d need to do is type the following text and the name of the Variable.
I thought I had done pretty well... except this is what I ended up with:
What’s that “6” doing there? Captivate did exactly what was asked. I asked for current DAY, and the 6th day of the week appeared... Friday.
The reason for the confusion can be found in Captivate’s Variables dialog box (via the Project menu). The Description for cpInfoCurrentDay: “Day of the week as set on the user's computer. Values range from 1-7 starting with Sunday. Sunday=1, Monday=2, and so on.” And that explains why Friday displays as the number 6.
I’m going to show you how to create a quick Conditional Advanced Action that will ensure that 6 is displayed as Friday in my current project.
First, open the Variables dialog box and add a new User Variable called myDay.
Replace the cpInfoCurrentDay variable in your caption with your new myDay variable.
Next, open the Advanced Actions dialog and create an action that looks like this (I named mine determineDay):
Be sure to create and fill in the Decision Blocks, one for each day of the week. As you create the Decision Blocks, remember to set the value for each appropriately (Sunday is 1, Monday is 2, etc. as shown in the images above and below).
Execute the advanced action somewhere in your project. (I’d suggest via the On Enter drop-down menu on the slide where you’ll want to display the day of the week. In the image below, I'm executing my determineDay action.)
Assuming it's Friday, preview the slide and you'll see this in your text caption:
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Like this little action? Want to learn how to create more actions like this, and more complex ones too? Join me for my Captivate Variable and Action Deep Dive series. The 101 class starts with the basics. As we move through 201, 301, and 401, we will continue to build your skills and practice with Captivate Variables and Advanced Actions. Next? We conquer the world!
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Lori Smith, COTP, is IconLogic's lead programmer and Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in Captivate. Lori has a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT as well as a Master’s in electrical engineering from George Mason University. She has been working in the field of software engineering for more than 20 years. During that time she worked as an embedded software engineer at Raytheon (E-Systems) and ARINC.
If you need to share an Adobe Presenter presentation with another developer, you’ll find the Presenter's Package tool very useful.
Presenter projects begin as a single, self-contained PowerPoint presentation. You can transfer them from one computer to another without worrying about leaving a part of the presentation behind. However, once you add audio or videos assets to a PowerPoint slide via the Presenter tab on the PowerPoint Ribbon, those assets aren’t embedded into the presentation. Instead, Presenter creates a folder that houses those assets every time you save. Should you forget to include the assets folder when you send the PowerPoint presentation to a colleague, the person opening the presentation will receive alert messages about missing files as Presenter attempts to load the assets.
When you package a Presenter project, everything a developer needs to open the project is included in the package (except for the actual Microsoft PowerPoint or Adobe Presenter software). A developer simply needs to double-click the prpkg file they receive from you to extract all of the project assets into a self-contained folder.
To create a Package, from the Adobe Presenter tab, Presentation group, click the Package tool.
Click the Browse button (the three dots) and select a folder for the package.
Click the Pack button and you're done. As mentioned above, the prpkg file contains everything a fellow developer needs to make changes to the project (assuming they have both PowerPoint and Presenter installed).
Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.
If you intend to create an eLearning course, it’s a good bet that you’re going to start the development process in Microsoft PowerPoint. However, PowerPoint is missing some key eLearning features to allow you to output finished eLearning content. For instance, PowerPoint cannot create software simulations or video demos. There is no way to add quizzes or learner interactions in PowerPoint. And, because there are no reporting features or provisions for SCORM or AICC, you cannot effectively integrate PowerPoint presentations with Learning Management Systems.
Instead of relying on PowerPoint alone for your eLearning content, you’ll need to take your finished presentations into an eLearning development tool such as Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, or TechSmith Camtasia. While in those tools, you’ll add the necessary eLearning features and then publish your content. Alternately, you can rely on Presenter, a PowerPoint plug-in that works together with PowerPoint to accomplish many of the things you can do in Captivate, Camtasia, and Storyline.
But what happens to your beloved PowerPoint slides when they get incorporated into today’s eLearning tools? Do the animations still work? How about the hyperlinks? Does the voiceover audio you added to your PowerPoint slides still work when the slides are imported into your eLearning tool? Do the fonts look okay? If you or the subject matter expert updates the PowerPoint presentation outside of the eLearning tool, does the eLearning version update or do you have to re-import?
Attend this action-packed session and learn how PowerPoint works with the top eLearning tools of the day. You’ll learn the strengths and weaknesses of each eLearning tool via live demonstrations (there is no pre-recorded content). This is live, online training at its very best!
When I teach my live, online Certified Online Training Professional course, one of the core concepts I encourage is blended learning (combining online digital media with traditional classroom teaching concepts). Specifically, there's great value in integrating eLearning (asynchronous training) with live (synchronous) training by providing access to eLearning content from within the virtual training space.
Published eLearning content can typically be provided to online students via a Materials pod or direct link (URL) you type into the Chat pod. All of the main training platforms (WebEx, GoToTraining, Adobe Connect) provide Chat and Materials pods, although they might give the pods different names.
The problem with sending students outside of the training space to engage with eLearning content is that the student leaves the virtual classroom. Once your learners are outside, good luck getting them back.
In my experience using many of the online training platforms, only one of the vendors offers a truly integrated blended-learning experience and allows you to share eLearning content directly from within the training room, and that’s Adobe with its virtual training platform Connect.
Here’s how you can share eLearning courses from within Connect. First, create the eLearning content in Adobe Captivate, and then publish as an SWF.
From within Adobe Connect, choose Share Document.
Click the Browse My Computer button and upload the SWF you published with Captivate. In the image below, I’ve already uploaded a SWF I created with Captivate called UsingNotepad. Once you’ve uploaded content, it stays in the Select Document to Share area so you don’t have to upload content again and again and again.
All you need to do now is click the OK button and everyone in the virtual room will not only see the eLearning, they’ll be able to interact with it independent of the other attendees.
The ability of virtual attendees to work through the eLearning content independently is so cool, it's the one feature that might encourage you to select Adobe Connect as your training platform above others... and Adobe Captivate as your eLearning tool. If you’re thinking about going the Connect route, head on over to Engage Systems, tell them your friends at IconLogic said hello, and then ask for a demo of Adobe Connect.
Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.
During our live, online Articulate Storyline Beginner classes, we teach students how to import and record voiceover audio. The most common question we get about voiceover audio is “Can Storyline convert text to audio files?” The answer has always been "no." However, “no” became “yes” thanks to a recent Storyline 360 update.
If you select the Insert tab on the Ribbon and click the Audiotool (located in the Media group), you’ll find Text-to-Speech. Yayyyy! (If you don't see Text-to-Speech as shown below, and you're using Storyline 360, start Articulate 360 and see if updates are available.)
Before using Text-to-Speech, I suggest a little pre-work. If you’ve created a voiceover script (or have access to it), you will save yourself a lot of extra work in Storyline because you can copy and paste the script text into Storyline’s Notes area (instead of typing). The Notes can easily be converted to Speech.
Next, choose Insert > Media > Audio > Text-to-Speech to open the Insert Text-to-Speech dialog box. From the upper left of the dialog box, you can select from an awesome number of languages.
Choose your narrator and, if you'd like, use the Preview Voice option to get a feel for how your narrator is going to sound.
You can type the script text manually if you're into that sort of thing (the typing I mean). But remember the Notes I encouraged you to create earlier? Click the Copy From Slide Notes button and those notes will instantly appear in the panel (there's no extra typing required... I love that).
Click the Insert button and you're done, done, done. The resulting audio file appears at the bottom left of the slide.
If you'd like to hear the resulting audio (and who wouldn't?), right-click the speaker icon and choose Preview.
After you've added the Text-to-Speech, you can change to a different language or Narrator by visiting the Audio Tools tab and clicking Text-to-Speech and clicking the Update button.
Thanks, Articulate for making the whole Text-to-Speech thing so fast and easy!
Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.
Not so long ago we were tasked with creating an eLearning project that included a software demonstration of an iPhone mobile app. We experimented with several techniques for capturing the app including using a program that reflected the iPhone onto the computer. (To reflect our iPhone to the computer, we used a program called, wait for it, Reflector. Once the phone and computer were on the same wireless network, it was fairly easy to get Reflector to show the mobile device on the computer. And once displayed on the computer, it was a breeze to capture the reflection. We used Adobe Captivate, but any eLearning tool will work including Articulate Storyline and TechSmith Camtasia.
As an alternative to reflecting the mobile device and capturing what's shown on the computer, you can create individual screen captures of an app directly on the mobile device; then you can send the images to yourself via email, Dropbox, or any one of a several file transfer capabilities available on today’s mobile devices. (Just about every modern mobile device allows you to create screen captures.)
The only problem with manually creating screen captures is, well, you’ll need a lot of screen captures for a software demonstration. And that brings me to the latest and greatest innovation I’ve seen in iOS 11: video demos can now be created natively on the iPhone, saved, exported just like an image (only the video is an mp4), and then imported into your favorite eLearning development tool.
Here's how easy it is to record a demo on an iPhone via iOS 11: In this scenario, I'd like to demonstrate the process of enabling the Personal Hotspot feature on an iPhone. To enable recording, swipe up from the bottom of the phone. Tab the button indicated below and, three seconds later, you're recording everything you do on the device.
When finished, tap the red bar at the top of the device and your recording will be saved among your other videos and photos as an MP4. In the image below, you can see the demo I captured as it appeared in the Camera app on my iPhone.
To add the video to a Captivate project, choose Video > Insert Video. In Camtasia, go to the Media Bin, right-click, and Import Media. And in Storyline, go the Insert tab on the Ribbon and, from the Media group, click the Video drop-down menu, and then chooseVideo From File.
Here's the video I captured and put into YouTube. (I imported the video into Camtasia and shared it. I didn't make any edits to the video but could have easily added audio, music, callouts, animations, you name it.)
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Looking to learn how to create eLearning in any of the top development tools (including Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and TechSmith Camtasia)? Check out these live, online, and highly interactive classes.
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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.
Lori Smith, 
Geeky Girl Karin Rex is an online learning pioneer and whiteboard animation evangelist. Since 1989, Karin has owned 
Kal Hadi, 
Kevin Siegel, CTT, 
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