Adobe Captivate 4,E-Learning,SCORM Packager

A new addition to Captivate 4 is a separate application called SCORM Packager. It can be used to combine multiple Captivate SCOs, Flash Created swfs, Presenter quiz, Course builder quizzes into a single multi-sco SCORM package (zip). It extends Captivate’s capability of creating a SCORM enabled package by allowing user to combine these packages. This application will be useful when SCORM complaint courses created by different users have to be clubbed together into a single package.

The SCORM Packager can combine

• Captivate projects output (.zip files when you publish a captivate project for SCORM)
• Flash Learning Interaction files (.swf files which use LMS Adapter for tracking)
• Presenter created Quiz
• Coursebuilder quiz (converted into scorm package)
• Combination of the above files

Perform following steps, in order to add Captivate SCOs to a SCORM package:

1. Launch SCORM packager, add Course manifest details

The Course Manifest details include the following information:

-SCORM version (1.2 and 2004)

-course details like Identifier, Title, Description, Version, Duration and Subject

One the course Identifier and Title are mandatory whereas the rest is optional.

2. Click Add module – Select the SCO (zip file) that you have created using Captivate 4

3. Add sco details in the form when prompted.

Each SCO- identifier should be unique for each course/sco and the final course should have corresponding entry in the imsmanifest.xml file.

4. Publish the final package

The packaged zip contains resource files of each SCO contained in individual folders and xsd and imsmanifest at the root level.

Please note that if the structure of any of the SCOs is changed i.e. the location of xsd or imsmanifest files is changed, the packager will not work as intended.

The version of SCORM should be same for all courses that are to be integrated into a single package. However, the version of Action Script for the SCOs need not be same.

The packaged zip file can be uploaded on any LMS and the individual courses can be taken by user.

Flash Learning Interactions

Flash learning interactions are available with new Elearning Suite. These are Flash components for commonly used interaction types such as multiple choice, True / false etc. The best way to use these interactions is using quiz templates which has sample interactions used and are configurable. You can create a quiz pretty fast using these templates.

LMS Adapter is an integral part of these Quiz templates, which enables these templates to track user progress. Quiz templates are SCORM enabled and uses LMS Adapter to communicate with LMS. Once you create a quiz using this template it is pretty simple to add it as a sco in SCORM packager.

Perform following steps, in order to add a Quiz template based quiz to a SCORM package:

• Launch SCORM packager, add Course manifest details
• Click Add module – Select the swf file you created using quiz template
• Add sco details in the form

And this is very much it.

You are now ready to publish this package for the SCORM version you selected. Also, LMS Adapter enables quiz template based quizzes to choose the SCORM version at runtime. This means that for these swf files, you need not worry about the version you are publishing for. It can be either SCORM 1.2 or 2004.

Combining SCORM packages created Using Different Tools

It is very easy to combine SCORM packages, created using different tools. For the above mentioned supported formats, you can either add a zip file or a swf (learning Interaction swf) to create a multisco package out of it.

In case of Learning Interaction the sco details need to be provided, while adding the sco. For ready scorm packages sco details are extracted from the imsmanifest.xml, available in the package. After adding all the scos the final package is just one click away.