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A
Anonymous
June 11, 2013
Question

Random branching scenarios (CP6.1)

  • June 11, 2013
  • 1 reply
  • 2323 views

I've got an idea for a training game in Captivate, but it requires randomly selecting scenarios that could be 3-5 slides long meaning random questions are not going to work. I've searched the forum for ideas on random branching but can't find anything useful (although a few calls for this feature to be added to Captivate).

One solution I'm thinking of is to have the first slide of the scenario as a question slide in a pool, triggered from a random question slide. The question would then jump to the next slide in the scenario, which would be in the timeline. The scenario would continue from there sequentially, with the last slide in the series being another random question slide, starting the process off for the next scenario. I've included a rough diagram below to show what I'm thinking.

I haven't tested this out yet, but think it should work (although I could potentially end up with 100+ scenarios). 

Does anyone have any better ideas on how to achieve this? Or any suggestions for improvements to what I'm proposing?

Thanks

Alistar

Update: I've tested the above, and it works pretty well, except if the third question in the pool is randomly selected by Captivate then only that scenario plays through, as there is nothing after that to redirect the project back to the question pool. I'm wondering if a variable on each question to indicate if it's been selected would work, with an advanced action that checks and redirects to a random question slide if there haven't been enough scenarios selected (say if 3 scenarios haven't been completed), or skips the random question if enough have been done?

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Lilybiri
Lilybiri
Legend
June 11, 2013

Hello,

Sounds interesting and would like to help you out with the advanced actions, but I'm not sure to understand the work flow totally.

Lilybiri

E
ElaKat
Inspiring
June 11, 2013

I'm also not exactly sure what the final result should be, but I'd be tempted to go either Lilybiri's way (Advanced Actions are cool!) or experiment with JavaScript (I'm new to programming, and everything looks like a JavaScript problem at the moment!).

Or perhaps a combination- some JavaScript to create random numbers, and Advanced Actions to handle jumping to the proper slides and keeping track of where in the random number sequence you are...

A few questions:

  1. Do you need bookmarking? Things become immensely more complicated with branching/randomization in my experience.
  2. Do you need this game to be graded? If not, things are simpler.
  3. Do you want all of the scenarios to be run through in a game, or a set number? It sounds more like the latter to me.
  4. When searching the forums, did you come across my method for randomizing non-question slides? Your situation is different, but I think it might be a good place to start, or at least worth a read to see how someone tackled a somewhat similar scenario.
A
Anonymous
June 12, 2013

Thanks for the responses - here's a bit more information (I've also put together a test project to check whether a basic version would work with branching - I'm happy to share it if it helps).

The game is based around products and is a way of teaching and reinforcing product knowledge for sales staff (essentially learning features of products then matching to customers).  I would see each product having a number of scenarios (perhaps 10-20) that would be selected randomly as the learner uses the game. There would be no need to bookmark, as I'd want them to start the game again each time they went into it - I was thinking it would be time limited though (probably 5-10 minutes).

The learner would be assigned points based on correct selection of products (and maybe also correct questioning to determine the customer needs). The total points would be reported back to our LMS when the time is up and used to run reports that we can present as leaderboards across the company.

What I need Captivate to do is to continue assigning scenarios until the time runs out (I think this could be achieved by just having more slides than would ever be possible to get through in the time limit). 

If each scenario was going to be a single slide I think it could be done easily using random question slides. The problem is that the scenarios may end up being several slides long, so a random question slide can only work as the first slide of the scenario, then it has to jump to the rest of the scenario.

I've downloaded your method for randomizing slides ElaKat, and I'll work through it today (with my basic knowledge of JS) and see if would work in this scenario.

I'm not even sure that Captivate is going to be the best tool to create this, but I figure since I already know and have Captivate it's a good place to start.

Thanks

Alistar

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