where to start learning to use adobe captivate
As a brand new newbie to adobe captivate, is there a suggested pathway through the training material?
Thank you for starting this thread! I’m a beginner too, and I agree with Kim. Practicing and googling solutions is really the best way to learn.
But if you have access to LinkedIn Learning – I recommend their Captivate Essentials course! It’s a really great introduction to the program.
There are many very helpful captivate courses and videos available online. Performing a simple google search should bring a few up for you. Paul Wilson, a captivate expert, has a video series available on YouTube. In terms of courses, there are a few available on sites like Udemy and LinkedIn Learning (formerly known as Lynda.com). Good luck on your Captivate journey!
I’ve only been working with Captivate for 6 or 7 years, and to be honest much of my initial ‘training’ consisted of working on a Captivate project, discovering that I don’t know how to do something (or if it is even possible to do something with Captivate), and then searching through these forums (and the rest of the internet lol) to see if anyone else has run into something similar.
However, that said, there are several Captivate practitioners that have been extremely generous with their time and knowledge, sharing their expertise both here and on their own sites (Lieve Weymeis’ Captivate Blog and Paul Wilson’s E-Learning Tutorials come to mind, but there are others out there, too). I believe both also offer Captivate training as part of their professional services.
And of course, there is the Captivate Learning Hub, which has many tutorials and ‘getting-started’ videos (I wish these were here when I was getting started). If you haven’t already viewed those, I’d recommend starting there.
Finally (sorry for the long winded response; waiting for a large Captivate project to finish publishing on my other screen haha!) you might check out the Best of eLearning Examples page. If you see a project that looks like something you might create, try to build your own version with Captivate (I wouldn’t get too wrapped up with fancy graphics when you’re building a practice project; instead, focus on recreating the functionality you trying to learn).
Hope this helps!
Yesterday I tried to comment on your answer, but it was deleted twice by this portal, so I try another time in another browser.
Your answer is really a confirmation of what I also write about training on my website. No one is a blank slate concerning learning, and eLearning is also about learning. The ideal situation for training is to find a trainer or a ‘curator’ who can create a training schedule based both on the existing skills and the future dreams of the trainee. It can be quite different. Just some examples: if the trainee has acquired pedagogical skills in a previous career, needed training will be quite different for a trainee with acquired programming skills and/or experience with existing Adobe applications or other eLearning authoring tools. And a graphical designer will need another approach, but everyone had learning experiences, good and bad ones.
You have clarified your personal learning history, in this case with Captivate. My history is quite different. I learned Captivate by exploring and trying to solve problems for other Captivate users in the Adobe forums.
May I add the Quick Start Projects to your list with possible resources? Exploring them can be interesting as well… They became available with the most recent version, 11.5 and you have learned CP with much older versions.
No, there is not a specific path. Bit logical in my mind, since both your history and your future goal should be taken into account. It is the reason why I always have a take-in conversation with learners before accepting a training job and/or establishing a curriculum.
There are some specific topics which I experienced to be causing lot of problems for users. This is based on my activity of over a decade in the Adobe Captivate forums, on social media, on my blog and as trainer/consultant. But other trainers will have other viewpoints. Here are the problem topics:
- Timeline in Captivate is rather special, and often leads to confusion.
- Quizzing with its default design and tweaking possibilities are definitely number 1 on my blog site
- Themes: underestimated but real timesaver for consistent design
- Fluid Boxes: if your aim is also to create responsive projects. Do not tackle this topic before having a proper level of skills with the first 3 topics.
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