Well yes!.. Printed versions of your e-learning courses prove to be instrumental in re-iterating the learning. They can turn out to be of huge help when you need a reference at future point of time when the e-learning course is no more accessible.
Recently, I took an e-learning course on how to file income tax returns. Boy!! Believe me filing IT returns in India is pretty taxing. When I actually sat down to file my returns I wished I had some kind of hard copy of the e-learning course which could have helped me file my returns.
It then struck me that the e-learning author should have provided us with a printed version of the course so that people like me could refer it at later point of time. Adobe Captivate could have helped here. Adobe Captivate does a great job in converting you re-learning course into MS Word document. Once you have the document you could print it to create the hard copies of the course which can be referenced by the users at later point of time. In my opinion this is a huge advantage which re-iterates the learning.
Let us check out what Adobe Captivate has to offer in this paradigm. Well, with captivate you could publish your file to MS word in following formats:
- Handouts : The ‘Handout’ output converts your Adobe Captivate project into handouts showing all the slides as they would appear in the e-learning project. You also have options to control what objects from your e-learning course get printed to handouts. For e.g. you could eliminate printing of mouse objects, in your e-learning course, in the handouts by simply un-checking a checkbox.
- Lesson : The ‘Lesson’ output converts your Adobe Captivate project into a lesson, complete with your questions and an answer key.
- Step by step: The ‘Step by Step’ output converts your Adobe Captivate project into a short reference guide. This is the best option when you intend to provide a hard copy of a software demo for future reference (say when the user is actually using the software). Btw, this is exactly what I was looking for while browsing through the thousands of controls on IT website in-order to file my IT returns..
- Storyboard : You are a content designer and have been given a set of requirements to create an application for a client. You design the application using Adobe Captivate and want your manager to review it, but your manager doesn’t have Adobe Captivate installed locally to review your project. You can select the Publish Your Project as a Storyboard option so that others can review a printed version of the project. The storyboard option outputs two sections:
- A brief summary of the entire project such as the number of slides, duration of each slide, project preferences selected, quiz preferences, hidden slides, background audio, and so forth
- A detailed view of each slide, including each slide’s properties, such as transition, navigation, audio, background image and so forth; it also shows the objects within each slide.
You would find above options in the publish dialog:
So you see..How the printed version of the e-learning course could have made my life easy. Do you still think that printed version of an e-learning course is ironical?? Happy publishing to word!!
[…] Printed version of an E-Learning course? Ironical!..Well not always… (blogs.adobe.com) […]
Dr. Partridge,
Greetings from the other side of eLS and CP5.X development.
I am struggling with this topic right now and it is more complicated and fear producing than all of the comments above. I typically develop my storyboard and initial content in MS-PowerPoint because of speed, 3D rendering, shadows, reflections, rotations, Etc., but the real BIG reason is that the PPT output is so nice. Once you fix the non-centered headers in the POT template in Captivate it looks better, but PPT looks even better and the formatting is spot-on.
Let’s just call the above my preferred way and otherwise assume that the handout authoring tool is neutral so that the topic moves beyond the tool. Here is where I am struggling… Handouts at the front of the class can allow a user to quickly click through and then literally read the handout information into the question model and voila’, the answers pop out. I have pre-test flyovers that offer a nice review of my materials (pre-test) and then the Quizzes, but having the handouts is bothering me.
So maybe I move the handouts to the end and that is the reward for completing the Quiz? Now, what do the learners do, take notes? I suppose that is the lesser evil here because I don’t want them to adopt a “use the handout to get the answers” mentality.
Conversely, the use of handouts that show our slides could be passed on to the next learner in an e-Learning corporate environment. So now the coffee station conversation turns to on-line learning and someone says,” I have the course lessons printed out from the handout since I completed the module, do you want to use them?” I am not going to launch into ethical issues here, we cannot predict how G-d fearing people will really behave, but I would suggest that it could circumvent the planned intentions.
As you can see, I have debated this issue in my mind and I am a strong believer in the statement “Together we’re a genius,” so feedback comments are welcome.
Firstly J, great comment. It’s a blog post in its own right. So to your questions:
I think that you are right, in the higher ed / secondary learning environments – and in any face to face environments (even virtual synchronous classrooms) we now have this tension between what we know should prove to be more effective approaches to eLearning and the long tail of didactic (sage on the stage) instruction that has dominated our learning and teaching, training landscape. We can generally accept that the information delivery model alone isn’t going to carry the learners to real, useful knowledge transfer – and i think that is really the pedagogical heart of your question.
If we start there, then is the real question; what kind of activity / activities can i design for the learners that will engage them and encourage deeper knowledge transfer. I think the key is in what Clark & Mayer et. al define as the Personalization Principle – specifically, the conversational imperative. Research clearly demonstrates that conversational interaction triggers deeper engagements. If you can find a way to make those assessments more about conversational interaction – and your presentation of slides / data / research / notes / information – simply the responsive part of the conversation – i think you’ll find you get better retention and people like the experience more.
There are lots of ways to accomplish this – including schema building kinds of exercises, Socratic and guided questioning, and simply asking frequent interrogative questions (substantial – not like, are you following kinds of messages.)
When I publish a lesson with an answer key in Word, the document displays the background images from the master slide. I tried editing the lesson.doc template that Captivate 5 uses to build the answer key. I removed the [CPSlideBackground] parameter from every page in the template, but the master slide background images remain. Is there documentation that you can find that explains all of the template parameters and how to set them? I’m a recovering software developer and am now a senior instructional designer in charge of customizing Captivate for our “self-service” customers who are not Captivate literate. I would appreciate any feedback you have on the Word templates. Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Did you receive any feedback on the template parameters? I am having trouble getting the content behind the highlight boxes to show up. The boxes are there but they completely cover what is behind them. This function worked fine in Cap4. I would like to be able to create my own templates to rearrange the document. Any help would be appreciated.
Hi Jeffrey, thanks for your note. Try hiding the highlight boxes using the timeline – this makes it possible to select objects behind. If you mean the backgrounds – I merged shapes to make the backgrounds – so those all become a single background image. You can conversely use the lock to lock the highlight boxes (also in the timeline layer.) I fiddled some with what elements to put on the Master Slides and what to put on sample slides. I favored text on the filmstrip sample slides rather than the master slides mostly because I imagined people would click on the stage to select something – and not know why things wouldn’t get selected (because you have to select element x on the Master slide). So think of it this way, if the element is on the filmstrip slide – it should react / behave as you’d expect. If it’s in the Master Slide – you’ll need to select the master slide element (that switches Captivate editor into Master Slide Editing Mode) and then you’ll be able to edit that slide as usual.
This is a current discussion topic here. Printed slides work as key reminders to the presentation given, but we should never think that the printed slides can stand by themselves outside the presentation. What makes eLearning modules effective is different than the supporting documentation. If handouts stop at the “screen” level they become unusable.I’ve begun estimating how much leverage there actually is between eLearning modules and the manuals that need to go with them.One of our customers has opted for eLearning modules inlui of updates to the manual. It promises to be a very interesting move. Documentation will be supplied only as reference material instead of as a user manual.
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