Multiple Software Actions on One Slide?

Question

I want to create training on software, but not using the Captivate built-in recording capability because all I have is documentation on the system.

My question is whether it's possible to do have the student do multiple actions on a single slide or whether each action has to be a separate slide. For example, in Microsoft Word, for saving a file with a new name, you need to select File, Save As and select the location and type the name and click Save. Can all that be done on a single Captivate slide? If so, how? If not, I'm concerned that the back and next buttons in my elearning would work in a non-intuitive way because they would navigate through all these mini-steps.

Also, what is the best way to program this? Should I use click boxes? Or is there a built-in interaction that I should use to detect whether the student did the appropriate action and provide feedback?

Thanks!

Lilybiri · Accepted Answer

Use the timeline. I have written several articles about the Timeline. This was the last one:

Timeline - Advanced Workflows - Captivate blog

Look at this timeline:

The first interactive object (shape button) pauses the Timeline at 1,5sec. It waits for the learner to click on it (first step) and will then release the playhead The nest two steps are with two click boxes, each of them pauses he timeline. The last interactive object is a Text Entry Box. You'll have to create text containers to show for correct or incorrect click/text entry and create conditional actions to show the correct feedback text. All those text containers will have to be hidden On Enter for the slide, and the variable associated with the TEB will have to be reset.

If you look at a training simulation created with Captivate, you'll see that this would have been done in 4 slides. That makes it much easier of course.

Since you have custom navigation buttons, why not keep to the step per slide, but have the Next/Previous button only navigating to the first slide or an interaction sequence? I don'tt know what you are using: shape buttons on master slides or timed for the rest of the project?

Lilybiri · Answer

First another question: are you planning to do this with a normal project or a responsive project?

I would never use the default playbar iin such a situation. The problem with that playbar is the progress bar. If you want the learners to navigate freely, they can scrub the progress bar and end up in the middle of a slide. Since you want to set up everything manually, that means that you have also to create actions to reset a slide. Such an action will be best triggered by the On Enter event of a slide. But with the scrubbing that On Enter event may not occur.

Yes, you can have all the steps on one slide, but it will mean a lot more work: you will need several interactive objects (click boxes, buttons or Text Entry Boxes) staggered on the timeline to release the playhead when a step has been done by the learner.

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