Adding a Random Question in Captivate

Adding a random question in Captivate 5 is pretty easy. First you will need to create test questions in question pools. You can see your question pools by selecting Question Pool under Windows from the menu bar.

Captivate Question Pool View

When you are ready to add a random question to your Filmstrip, go to Insert/Question Slide in the menu bar. In the Insert Question pop-up form, select Random Question, enter the number of questions to include and select the Question pool to use.

Insert Random Question

If you later decide to use a different question pool,  go to the Quiz Properties of that Random question and change your selection.

Select New Question Pool

Fun and Games in training

Just wrapped up a very interesting project. Working as lead in a 3 person team, we created a 3 day ILT sales training course for the rollout of a mobile phone OS.

The audience are the lead sales managers, they have to become very familiar with the software and hardware in a very short period of time so that they can go and train the store associates. In an environment where training is happening while the product is still in development, it can be tricky to get the right technical specs, access to samples, and getting our materials updated.

What I enjoyed most was the emphasis on exercises so that our learners can practice as much as possible. With names like “Demo That Feature”, “Whose Phone Is It Anyway”, and “Know Thy Audience”, I had fun working with the team to come up with exercises that involved demonstrating the phones, remembering the key features, and selling points.

I thought the best exercise of the course is “Whose Phone is it Anyway” which is similar to the tv show ”Who’s Line is it Anyway”. The objective is to have fun performing demonstratons using the knowledge learned during class. It involved teams competing against each other and having the semifinalist do a final faceoff for the winner. The exercise is a wonderful way to get everyone participating and try to out-do each other in a friendly competitive environment.

It was a lot of fun and different because it was a consumer product and the client SME team was wonderful to work with.

Storyboarding in PPT

I don’t remember if I’ve written about this before but PPT is a great storyboarding tool. Especially if you are creating both ILT and WBT for the same course. With my current project, we will be creating ILT for the initial training rollout to current employees but will have a WBT version for refresher and new hires.

PPT converts/imports well into Captivate and Articulate so if you’re doing ILT, then PPT is an excellent choice to storyboard from.

Pros:

• Everyone has PPT
• Everyone knows how to use PPT
• PPT can be published into Word format if track changes is desired
• PPT 2007 and up come with great tools such as SmartArt
• Notes imports into Captivate to be used as closed caption and narration
• PPT & Articulate work hand in hand

Cons:

• Changes made by reviewers are not tracked
• “looks” like PPT by default

Usually I like to put the visual elements on the screen and add any IG notes followed by WBT narration in the notes section . Text in the notes section can always be removed for ILT or WBT use, but this way all the information is located in one place and the reviewer can see everything.

It is important to go over with the reviewer what the storyboard intends to do (create ILT, WBT, etc) so that they know that they are reviewing for more than one type of product.

New Year New Project

Quick update

Will be taking on a new project soon. This one might be a little challenging as it’s technical training for a custom software to be rolled out globally to over a thousand users. The biggest challange I see is that the two software applications are still being developed and I’ll be working with only one other ID to build their training program from scratch. This means ADDIE from top to bottom in just a few months.

I’m up for the challenge and even better, will be working with a former colleague whom I like very much work well together with.

So stay tuned!

PowerPoint SmartArt

Description: SmartArt is a very simply way to add color, shape, and emphasis to your PowerPoint content. The prebuilt graphics are really easy to add and edit and best of all, there are many types to choose from, List, Process, Cycle, Hierarchy, Relationship, Matrix, Pyramid.

When to Use: Use SmartArt when you need to add a little pop to your presentation. But be careful about overusing it!

Tip: Get creative and borrow pieces of the SmartArt object if none of the  prebuilt version will work for your topic.