Adobe Captivate 6: Branch Aware

by Lori Smith

Branch Aware is new in Captivate 6. Unlike other new features (like HTML5 support and Themes), Branch Aware has gotten little attention and few people understand what the option does.

According to Adobe: "Use Branch Aware to calculate the final score based only on the questions in the branch that users have viewed. For example, consider that a project contains a quiz that branches into two modules that in turn contain a quiz. If a user reaches the module with three questions and 10 points each, the total score is considered as 30 points. If this option is not enabled, the scores are calculated on the total number of questions in the project and not the module that users actually viewed."

Huh? I don't know about you, but I find Adobe's description of Branch Aware to be confusing. Not to be deterred by Adobe's description, I set out to play with the Branch Aware feature and figure out what I could (and couldn't) do if I elected to use the option.

I created a simple project that is Branch Aware. You can download it here. The lesson has 12 questions. Each question is worth 10 points, so the total for the lesson is 120 (you can confirm the total point value via Project > Advanced Interactions). 

 

I enabled Branch Aware by choosing Edit > Preferences > Quiz > Settings and selecting Branch Aware from the group of Settings.

 

I broke the project into three quiz branches, each with four questions. The learner will only answer four questions for a total of 40 points. On slide 1, I added three buttons. Each button jumps to a different branch within the quiz (Beginner, Intermediate, Expert).  Taking a quick look at the Branching Window, (Window > Branching View), you can see the layout for my project.

 

To establish the branches, I not only needed to select the Branch Aware option, I also needed to set my question Actions properly. After the last question in each branch, I jumped the learner to the QuizResults slide.

 

If I hadn't set the last question in each branch to jump to the QuizResults slide, my question numbering would not display correctly. 

  

Once a learner takes my quiz, the QuizResults screen will display the appropriate scoring for the branch that the learner took.

 

Even cooler? If the learner chooses "Review Quiz" once reaching the quiz results slide, the learner will only review the relevant part of the quiz.

I was also surprised to find out that you can still require that the learner answer all questions within a branch. 

 

I tried everything I could think of to mess up the scoring results, but my lesson reported properly each time. The bottom line is that Branch Aware is one mighty cool feature. Give it a try and I think you'll agree.  

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We teach two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

Comments

[Julie Wales]

Hi there

I found this article fascinating and played with the branch aware myself and it works, up to a point. The quiz results page appears at the correct time but there are a few null results.

Maximum Score: NaN
Total number of questions: NaN
Accuracy: NaN

I have therefore started a brand new project with only some branching questions with, as far as I can see, the same settings as the other project and it works perfectly. I have sat comparing the 2 projects and the settings look the same. I have noticed on the project that isn't working correctly that the 'next' button in the questions are greyed out and not clickable. I have checked the settings and it states that the user can skip the questions, so I'm not sure why the 'next' button is greyed out.

Do you have any ideas what I've dont wrong?

thanks

Julie

[Lori]

Hi Julie,

Without looking at the erroneous project, I can only take a stab at the possible problem. My hunch is that you do not have the last question in each branch set to Jump to QuizResults slide and it is instead going on to a question not in the branch. Or perhaps you are using the navigation bar instead of the quiz buttons to move around? The next button is disabled (or greyed out) if you have set Edit->Preferences->Quiz->Settings Answer All set. This is the appropriate behavior.

[Nina]

A disadvantage with the "Branch aware' function is that the playbar becomes unavailable and in the TOC the user can only navigate to slides he has visited yet. Not very handy when you also have theory slides between the quizes.
When I now re-open the project in an lms, I start on the slide where I last finished but I can't click on the previously visited slides. I am looking for a way to send this data to the lms, but haven't found a solution yet.