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mozzbo
Participant
May 16, 2011
Question

Can you do THIS with Captivate ? ...

  • May 16, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 575 views

Hi,

I'm new to Adobe Captivate and am using the 30 day trial to see if it does what I need it to do.

I need to create a test as follows:

60 questions, split into sections.

I need a small button for each question, numbered 1 - 60 aligned vertically in one line down the left of the page, so there would need to be some scrolling as 60 buttons would go off the screen.

Pushing each button would select a multiple choice question from a random pool. eg. Push button No. 5 and a random question would be there. Push 6 and there's be a different question, but if you pushed 5 again, the same question would be there as before. This enables the person being tested to skip back and fore between questions by clicking the buttons.

There may be numerous sections to each test.

eg.

Car Engines

Car Bodywork

Steering

Suspension etc. etc.

So, questions 1 - 8 say may be picked randomly from the 'Car Engines' question pool.

Questions 9 - 19 say may be picked randomly from the 'Car Bodywork' question pool. etc. etc.

At the end of the test, I need the results to be displayed such as:

Car Engines - 76%

Car Bodywork - 52%  etc.

I'd also like a simple bar chart representation if possible.

Hope this is clear.

I'd be very grateful if somebody could advise if this type of test scenarion can be created with Captivate.

I'm prepared to learn to use Captivate if it can be done, but do not want to waste my time if Captivate doesn't have the capability to create this type of test.

Grateful for any advice.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

RodWard
Community Expert
RodWardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 16, 2011

Captivate won't give you exactly what you've described straight out of the box.  But then, neither will any other authoring tool that I'm aware of.

Scrolling Navigation Buttons

The Captivate screen does not scroll.  You need to think of it as being like a movie you watch on TV, not as an HTML web page.  There are widgets available to give some scrolling of text in captions, but not something that would provide navigation on each and every quiz slide with buttons to jump to any question in the quiz.

Question Pools

Captivate can have any number of question pools associated with a single project file, but you have to set up how many questions will come from a given pool before you publish the project. When the project loads into the user's browser, the randomisation is done to select the particular questions from each pool that will appear in the movie at runtime and is then fixed for the duration of that runtime.  You can't control it and perform more randomisation via clicking of buttons. Basically, your navigation buttons are just intended to take you to particular question slides.  Which quiz question appears on that slide at runtime is totally dependent on the randomisation done from the question pool.

So if you have 5 question pools, each with 20 questions, but only want ten question from each pool to appear in your published project, you can easily do this with Captivate.

NOTE: One other thing you need to be aware of is that once your user answers a question and moves off that slide, their answer will be locked and cannot be changed until the Retake the Quiz or relaunch the lesson.  So although Captivate can be configured to allow backward movement, it does not necessarily allow your user to go back and change their answers to questions previously answered.

Quiz Results

Captivate considers all questions or scored objects in a project file to be part of its Quiz Scope.  This scope begins on the slide containing the first scored element, and goes until the last scored element.  A project file can have only one Quiz Results slide which will show scoring data from all objects in the Quiz Scope.

If you want to have scoring displayed separately for certain sections of your quiz (Car engines, Car bodywork, etc) you will need to use one of Captivate's more advanced techniquest using Advanced Actions and Variables.  It can be done out of the box, but it takes time to achieve the required scripting.

Captivate does not have bar charts as standard screen objects.  Once again, you could use some fancy Advanced Actions and Variable scripting to rig up something that looked similar.  But it would take yet more time.

I hope this helps with your decision.

M
mozzboAuthor
Participant
May 16, 2011

Many thanks RobWard for your thorough answer.

Unfortunately this means that Captivate is not right for my project.

The fact that you can't go back to an answered question is the deal breaker, as the exam I am trying to simulate allows you to do this and also 'flag' questions you are unsure of so you can go back to them later.

I've had the quiz/test working successfully, exactly as I want it, for several years, but it's written by a freelance programmer in Real Studio. As the exam interface is changing slightly, I was hoping to re-create the project in Captivate so that I can alter/add questions etc. myself, quickly without contacting the programmer.

Thanks for your time, it's certainly saved me a lot of time trying to get to know Captivate when ultimately it appears not to be the right software for my project.

Cheers,

mozzbo

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