Toolkit: Adobe Captivate 7

Adobe released version 7 of its market-leading eLearningdevelopment tool, Captivate. In existence since it was called RoboDemo back in2002, it is also one of the most feature-rich eLearning development toolsyou’ll find and one of the very few that work equally well on both Windows andMacintosh platforms. Adobe’s new pricing structure also makes it one of themost attractive tools to license for those on a budget.

What is Captivate?

Captivate has always been known as a software simulationtool, but in truth that feature is just one part of a full set of options thatallows you to create almost any kind of eLearning that you wish. I teachCaptivate on a regular basis at client sites and at conferences and amsurprised by how many of my students do not intend to use Captivate to createsoftware-training lessons and, in fact, use it to create soft-skills samples,interactive scenarios, and more. Come to think of it, most of the eLearning projectsI’ve created in Captivate in the last few years have had nothing to do withsoftware simulations either (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Captivate interface

As this is a review of the latest version, I will focus thisreview on what I think of the newest features. To get a full understanding ofwhat Captivate does, read my previous reviews (see Related Articles at the endof this one) and of course visit Adobe’s website at www.adobe.com/captivate.

What’s new?

Since Captivate 6 was released last year, Adobe has packed alot of new features into its new version. Here I will illustrate the top threein my book, and then list 12 others.

Drag and Drop

It’s odd that it took until now to finally have the abilityto set up drag-and-drop learner interactions in Captivate. In the past, we’vehad to use external widgets that were purchased from a third party to make drag-and-droplearner interactions work. It was a viable option, but no substitute for includingthis capability directly in the product. This has been part and parcel of mosteLearning development tools and a feature that adds so much to instructionaldesign capabilities. It’s with a sigh of relief and a muttered, “It’s abouttime” under our breath that we greet this new feature.

However, now that we have it, how is it? Ah, I’m glad togive this one a big thumb’s up! It is a very well thought-out series of stepsthat are quick and easy to traverse and do not require a computer sciencedegree to use. There are three steps to the wizard. Define all your draggableobjects by clicking them, define the possible destinations, again by clicking,and finally define which are the correct answers (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The drag-and-drop wizard

You can further customize the drag-and-drop interactionyou’ve created in the properties window. You can:

1. Determine whether objects should be judged insequence or in combination.
2. Have a caption shown on acceptance and onrejection and also provide a hint.
3. Determine how the objects should snap in thetarget area, including centering them, tiling them in one of four orders, oranchoring them to any of nine positions.
4. Provide Undo and Reset buttons.
5. Have objects move back to their startingpositions when incorrectly dragged.
6. Perform many other actions. See Figure 3.

Figure 3: The drag-and-drop options

New interactions

Captivate 6 introduced wizard-based interactions. All 11 ofthose have been updated and there are now 13 new ones, for a total of 24interactions. See Figure 4.

Figure 4: Some of the new interactions in Captivate

MathMagic Equations

A custom edition of MathMagic for creating math andscientific equations is now included in Captivate. Insert an equation and thena full personal version of MathMatic opens. See Figure 5.

Figure 5: The MathMagic equation editor 

But wait, there’s more!

Additional features or improvements are included in CP7.

1. All quiz questiontypes, including random questions, can now be published to HTML5.
2. In addition, you can now create questions banksseparate from Captivate in the standard GIFTformat and import them into Captivate.
3. HTML5assistance has been enhanced. For instance, when applying an effect to anobject (such as a Fly In), an asterisk next to the effect name indicates thatit is not supported in HTML5. Two asterisks indicate that the effect worksdifferently in HTML5.
4. Accessibilityoptions have also been enhanced in various ways.
5. You can now embedYouTube videos and live web pages directly in your lessons. (I find thisone very useful!)
6. Now you can recordsystem audio. For instance, if you are recoding a website, any soundsplayed in the website will be picked up in the simulation.
7. Learners can create and edit notes in a lesson so that they can keep track ofwhat’s important to them.
8. Learners can communicate with each other through Twitter using the included and enhanced Twitter widget inCaptivate.
9. Advanced Actionscan now (finally) be shared among lessons. For those of us who have had theheadache of rewriting Advanced Actions across files, this is a big plus!
10. While Captivate has always been able tocommunicate with AICC- and SCORM-compliant learning management systems, it nowalso supports Tin Can (theExperience API).
11. There is an included App Packager application now that lets you combine HTML5 and OAManimations you create in Adobe Edge or elsewhere.
12. Right-to-leftlanguage support has been added.

So what would I like in a future release?

1. Adobe has an application called PhoneGap thatlets you convert your Captivate-published files to a variety of mobile deviceformats. However, it is an additional-cost item, and considering how importantmobile learning has become, it really should be included in future versions atno extra cost.
2. Adobe should streamline the Advanced Actionseditor, and it should allow for faster creation of Advanced Actions. Anyone whois used to script editing finds it a very slow interface.
3. While it’s not a huge deal, I would love to beable to have a Preference setting to always start with a blank theme and notshow the Themes panel at all until I request it.
4. Quizzing should allow for extra options, such asallowing a Next or Skip button to appear only when a learner has alreadyanswered a question and is now returning to it from a subsequent question byhitting the Back button.
5. It would be great to have a Pause action in anAdvanced Action that allows us to set up a sequence of events with a littlemore control.

Changes in pricing

Adobe has been moving to a subscription model for itsproducts and Captivate is no exception. The standard price of $899 still holds,as does the $359 upgrade price (from CP6). You can still buy it as an educatorfor $299 as well.

However, the subscription model is only $29.99 a month ifyou want to subscribe one month at a time and only $19.99 a month if you committo a year-long subscription. This also gives you all new updates and is a greatdeal in my book, considering that Adobe releases a new version about once ayear. However, if you purchase a subscription, say to CP7, and then update toCP8 when it is released, you can no longer use CP7, making it tough if you areworking with clients who are still on the older version. All in all, it’s goodto have choices, but we need to take care in making those choices.

Conclusion

Fifteen new features and improvements make for avery good update, I believe. I’m very happy to finally have drag-and-dropabilities, but there are enough other features that, it seems to me, updating isa no-brainer. No tool is ever perfect, and I’ve listed some areas where I’dlike to see further improvements, too. What do you think? Add your commentsbelow.