Learn how to use Acrobat.com as a Learning Management System for Captivate 5 projects. It's a great way to get started with eLearning without a huge investment in an LMS.
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eLearning courses require a learning management system to keep track of who's taken what part of a course and who's passed or failed the assessments. What if you want to offer eLearning, however, but don't have an LMS? Enter Adobe Captivate 5 and its new integration with acrobat.com.
With Captivate 5, you can connect your assessment results to any SCORM or AICC compliant LMS and also to the Adobe Connect Enterprise LMS, now referred to as Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro in the prefs (which is interesting, since the product is now called simply Adobe Connect, but who's being picky...). New in Captivate 5 is the ability to report results to an acrobat.com account or to your own internal server. Of course, your own server would need a means of capturing the results, so you'd have to write a PHP, Cold Fusion or some other script to capture and record the results. We'll take a look at acrobat.com reporting in this post.
Take the quiz here to help me test the limits of the system. It's only four questions, so it won't take long.
Reporting to acrobat.com is easy. Open Preferences, then choose Reporting under the Quiz area. Enable reporting for this project, and then choose Acrobat.com. Click Configure... and enter your Acrobat.com credentials and the Company, Department and Course that define this project. Courses might have several parts, so you can aggregate several different assessments and projects into one course for reporting.
Once you click Save, Captivate will talk to acrobat.com and build the database to store the incoming quiz results.
The results are easy to get out with the Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer, an AIR app that comes with Captivate but which is also available for free at adobe.com. Results can be viewed directly in the Quiz Analyzer or downloaded as CSV or as raw XML. CSV can then be opened in Excel or another database, while the XML download contains a file for each response. These can be parsed individually or as a whole.
The Quiz Analyzer asks you to choose a server then enter your credentials for that server. The Quiz Analyzer can look into Acrobat.com and other servers that you configure in the preferences panel under the Options button. Once you enter your Acrobat.com credentials, it allows you to select projects by company, department and course. Once you have set these three selectors, click Generate Report, and the lessons will then appear in the detail panel below.
Double click the project to see the overall results per learner. Double click the learner to see the results per question. The CSV reports reflect the currently visible data, so you will need to export to CSV several times to get the full data for each learner. Consider using the SQLite DB file that coordinates the XML export, or importing the XML into your favorite database application or spreadsheet.
When I do my monthly talks about Adobe Connect for eLearning and Rapid Training (second Tuesdays of each month usually; check for actual schedule), I often get asked how to get the data after the fact. Now, you can use acrobat.com to get the data. Of course, a robust LMS will make it easier to manage large numbers of courses and learners, but if you're just getting started, this is a great way to get into the eLearning game.
Here's the second in a series of short videos featuring Flash Catalyst. It talks about buttons and how to reuse and style them.
In this teaser, we convert an Illustrator file to Flash Catalyst. The project is an e-book reader made specifically for Alice in Wonderland. Learn more at cs-magic.com
My Total Training for Creative Suite 5 Design Workflow series is now available at TotalTraining.com #AdobeCP
This training tackles the entire Design Premium suite, with chapters on Bridge, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash Catalyst, Flash Professional, Fireworks and Dreamweaver. The series focuses on typical uses of each of the applications, while helping the user to understand how the different applications relate to each other.
Trainees work along with me on project files that are included with the training. We create artwork in Photoshop and Illustrator, and then use that artwork to complete projects in InDesign, Flash Catalyst, Flash, Fireworks and Dreamweaver. New users the quick start training they need, and veterans gain an understanding of the new features of Creative Suite 5.
This training series is available online, and will be available as a DVD soon.
I recently completed a training series for Total Training on InDesign CS5 Essentials. #AdobeCP
It's now available as part of their growing CS5 offerings. I am also nearing completion of a CS5 Design Workflow series featuring Bridge, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash Catalyst, Flash Professional, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver. I begin an InDesign Interactivity series shortly. I also have Acrobat 9 and InDesign CS4 titles there. Check them out online or as DVD-based training for your office or home!![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7d4a85d2-2cfa-41db-95f2-4ffb5b0d0463)
I made some Acrobat trainings recently using Captivate 4. I really like Captivate and its ability to construct the demo, training and assessment parts of a project in one shot. Unfortunately, Acrobat sees Captivate as an assistive device. Bully for Acrobat for detecting assistive devices; that's a great feature. I want to disable it, though, and can't figure out how to tell Acrobat to ignore Captivate. The upshot is that none of the click areas get captured in the training and assessment parts, and need to be added manually. OK, ok, it's no worse than what I had with other solutions, but it's so nice with any other app to have the click areas build automatically.
My second Total Training series is now available: Total Training for InDesign CS4 Essentials
It is longer than Acrobat, and should help a lot of new users get started with InDesign.
I've been using CS4 now for a couple of months, and it really makes me happy to be in the graphics business. Flash alone is worth the money, but to get InDesign and the rest of the package is just icing on the cake.
I'll write more in support of this soon, when I get off the promo tour.
It's now official: I passed the Acrobat 9 ACE exam.
