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Lisa31013337pg2c
Known Participant
July 11, 2023
Question

Pros and cons of creating everything within Cp, or creating elsewhere and importing as videos.

  • July 11, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 825 views

Hi Community!

 

I am not new to teaching, presenting, or building slides and pedagogical material, but I am entirely new to putting it into course-authoring software. (Big learning curve here!) So I have a very big procedural question which I would really appreciate input on, before I spend too much time building material in this way that I -think- makes sense, but I may be having a blind spot. 

 

I am creating a project which will have 1,000+ slides of content.  I am planning to make the slides in Keynote (but would consider PPTX is there is a reason - please share opinions!) then export the slides to PDFs and make them into a video in either iMovie or Premiere, where I can put voice over and other sound if I want to.

 

Then I would bring the course material into Captivate as videos, and interperse Captivate-specific quizzes and interactive bits amongst the videos.

 

Opinions welcome if you think this is a good or bad way to handle this. Thank you so very much!

 

-Lisa, New Captivate User '23

 

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    L
    Lisa31013337pg2cAuthor
    Known Participant
    July 11, 2023

    Lilybiri and Stagprime, I appreciate your answers so much! Thank you 🙂

     

    My course material is approx 1 hour long, and my intention is that every 2-3 minutes there is an interaction.

     

    The reason I say there would be approx 1000 slides is that I create my slides with embedded subtitles, because I think after-the-fact subtitles are usually so bad. So sometimes one slide might become 4 or 5 because it is 4-5 phrases. Or 4-5 slides might be cartoon drawings that end up being a 1-second 'mini-movie'.  So that is the reason for a) a lot of slides and b) that I envisioned creating my material as a video or series of videos, then interspersing the "interactive" elements such as quizzes, flip-card widgets.

     

    I hear a mixed opinion, where on the one hand Lilybiri advises creating the content within Cp beause things don't import well - but I am concerned with the very limited layout options. And then Stagprime I hear you about the dangers of creating too much within one file or program, in case of a crash, corruption, etc.

     

    So there is no easy answer but I want to say how much I appreciate your input. I will try and experiment and also give this a lot of thought before I invest too much time creating any one format. Thank you, and if you both, or anyone else, has furthuer input, I woudl so much appreciate it!

     

    By the way, it seems that in Cp 12, when a video is imported, it takes a small area of the screen only - have either of you (or anyone else) found a way to get a video clip to occupy maximum screen real estte? Thank you in advance!

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    July 11, 2023

    Mixed opinion? No, we both mentioned that such a big amount of slides is not at all appropriate for a responsive project. Most people recommend to keep such a project to a duration of maximum 5 minutes. The necessity to split this up in multiple projects is clear.

    I have more problems with your workflows, because the idea of interactivity seems not to be very clear. Of course the limitations of the new Captivate is not helping, because in any responsive project you lose a lot of control as developer and that is here the case for sure. Nobody will watch such a long course on a phone, be realistic.

    It looks like you are too advanced to cope with all the design limitations in CP12, if you ask my opinion. At its present state it is not meant for what I suspect to be in your mind. Interactivity is not just some question slides, it is a lot more. It should be aimed at giving the learner as much control as possible for her/his learning curve and to enable reaching the goals of the course for any learner. Passive video is not a solution in that case.

     

    L
    Lisa31013337pg2cAuthor
    Known Participant
    July 11, 2023

    Yes, perhaps I will indeed end up splitting into 3 x 20-minutes modules.

     

    Mainly for now I am trying to figure out how much to create within Cp (which is limited in control/layout/etc) and how much to import from files created in other programs.

     

    Perhaps I misunderstood Stagprime as I thougt he was saying not to rely too much on creating within Cp. But maybe he was just talking about volume of material, period. Sorry for my confusion.

     

    And I do agree intuitively, not to have any one file/module/etc be too muc in volume. Thank you for your input, Lilybiri! Still a lot to learn as I bring my material ito this new format, and all of these opinions are much appreciated. 

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    July 11, 2023

    Lisa, I know you are on the (limited) new version of Captivate but even then I don't like what you propose as workflow.

    Do NOT use PPT nor Keynote to create slides, create them in Captivate. There is not even an import functionality anymore, and even more important, you can create exclusively responsive projects. PPT nor Keynote can create responsive projects.

    You know that I have a lot of experience with this authoring tool as I used it both for blended and distant learning in our university college. Reason for switching from presentations (which I used before PPT appeared and led to boring bulleted lists) to eLearning was the possibility for interactions, branching scenarios, use of assessments (not only quizzes) and personalized learning paths. You cannot achieve that with passive video. I had a lot of discussions with my students and with the many adult learners I coached about that. They told me: throw away those passive videos, give us as many interactions and control as is possible. Going back to passive video is going back on learning efficiency.

    Moreover, despite my limited experience so far with CP12, you need to realize that keeping the file size as low as possible for responsive projects is very important. Video is not really a low file size component. Using Captivate to aggregate a lot of videos has always been a bad idea.

    You can create interactive videos, although less easy than in Captivate Classic, by using the bookmarks. An interactive video is sort of a hybrid between a fully interactive course and a passive video. Here is an example of such an interactive video:

    Custom Play/Pause button

    Beware: this has been created in and is valid for Captivate Classic.

    Hope that this is a bit clarifying? 

    Stagprime2687219
    Stagprime2687219
    Legend
    July 11, 2023

    1,000+ slides!

    I hope that isn't a single project but maybe more like 100 smaller ones...?

    I personally try to keep projects small.

    It minimizes problems and helps when the need to update arises.

    To think if that one project got corrupted... 😮

    I also think that any reputable LMS will allow uploading videos individually as standalone artifacts for tracking.

    I would take advantage of that.

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