Branching Scenario quiz with interactive conversation/dialogue. Is this possible?

[katvsv]

Here is a branching scenario that I have been tasked with building out in Captivate. I haven't been able to find any instruction on how to create a quiz in this flowchart style, where the user chooses a response and that choice dictates where they go next in the dialogue/quiz. Is something like this even possible?

I found these examples that I believe were created using Storyline. So it seems that the concept has been done before. Does anyone have any recommendations on how to achieve this in Captivate?

Thanks in advance!

Kat V

[sarmo71]

Use actions with calls to diferents slide for each decision. You can view the structure with Branching panel (Window > Branching View)

[Lilybiri]

Any eLearning authoring tool can do this, if you know the tool. Sorry, but the screenshot of the flowchart is too small to read to give proper instructions.

Something very important is missing in your question: do you need to transfer the results to the gradebook of a LMS or not? This looks more like scenario-based learning, not like a real quiz where you need to transfer the score to a LMS.  

There are many ways to set this up. I would create custom master slides to start with, either based on the default quiz slide (MCQ) or as a start for custom question slides. The last type gives you more control but take more work.

For the branching you can use:

• In case of quiz master slide based question, the Success or Last Attempt event. 
• For custom question slides: use shapes as text container and convert them to interactive objects. You can use its Success event to trigger the actions.

You can assign advanced or shared actions. In this use case I would personally prefer shared actions, because they allow reusing with different parameters.

[katvsv]

The flowchart is the google doc link at the beginning of my post. Sorry for any confusion! You'll have to zoom in to see the details. If you have any problems accessing that link, I have attached a PDF version here (see Branch Mockup.pdf attached).

Yes, I will be reporting to an LMS!

[Lilybiri]

I tried to zoom in, but that was not possible using the first link. This is possible with the pdf-link.

That explains the workflow, but normally a score is built, and this workflow shows negative points for the wrong answers instead of giving positive score for a correct answer. A protocol like SCORM 1.2 wouldn't even support this, but it should be possible to reverse the situation to a building of positive scores. Captivate has the possibility to give penalty scores, which are negative but you need to be sure that the SCORM protocol supports what you want.  I see 8 answers which are considered 'wrong', but didn't explore deep enough to check if the learner has the possibility to have all of them wrong in his individual path. 

Since you have multiple paths throughout the project, the learner will not visit all slides. To get the correct score you will need to turn on the Branch aware feature in Quiz Preferences.  That will result in having dynamic quizzing system variables. Of course you will have to take out the default playbar, and where necessary add custom navigation buttons. Here is a blog post explaining Branch aware:

What is Branch Aware? - eLearning (adobe.com)

There are never more that 2 answers, you could even use the T/F type of question slides in this case. Choose 1 attempt for each of the quiz slides, and the Success/Last Attempt events for the navigation actions. 

There are 3 possible end slides. The 'score slide' which you can hide will need to be after those end slides. After the score slide you'll need at least one final slide. You cannot delete the score slide, because it is needed to have the score transferred, when getting beyond that score slide. Have a look at:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/secret-of-hidden-score-slide

Personally I am sure this can be created in Captivate, you wouldn't even need advanced/shared actions. However you will need thorough testing in the LMS about the 'negative points'. Do you have information about the LMS to be used?

[katvsv]

This course will be uploaded to a software called Workday.

For a little more background, I am building a training course with 6 separate "modules" in it. Each module contains some quiz questions. I have attached a PDF that shows slides from modules 3 through 4 of my course for a visual reference. It seems like I can't keep the questions and scoring seperate for each module though--Captivate is only letting me have one score slide at the end of the project.

So I am not sure how to set individual preferences for a specific quiz, like this flowchart branching scenario.

Thank you for all of your help, by the way! I only learned how to use Captivate about a month ago, so I am incredibly new to this whole world of eLearning and course building. It's a lot to wrap my head around.

[RodWard]

I think you need to first find out whether or not your Workday system supports SCORM learning modules.  I looked on their website and they claim to have a Talent Management solution as part of their system, but with other similar ERP systems that I have seen previously the problem may be that your organisation has not chosen to license all of the modules in the system. 

Without that Talent Management solution, you may or may not have any way to upload Captivate learning modules to Workday.  So I suggest you get that sorted out and confirmed before going too much further.

[katvsv]

I found this site/link several weeks ago that makes me think it will work: https://hr.virginia.edu/sites/default/files/TALENT%20COE/Workday/Basics%20of%20SCORM%20or%20AICC.pdf

[RodWard]

So all you need to do now is try to upload a SCORM zip file created with Captivate and see if it works on Workday.  Do this NOW.  Don't wait till the end of the project to find out bad news.

Whenever I start working with a new client I always try to create a very simple Captivate SCORM package with just one quiz question and maybe a couple of other slides (including the Quiz Results slide) and get this uploaded into the client's LMS to test whether or not it works with basic settings.  

[katvsv]

Thank you! We were told that the client wants to do all the testing on their end, so I don't have access to Workday myself. But I can ask my boss if we can send them a small sample file now to test the functionality. This has been such a quick turn-around of a project that i am just trying to keep my head above water at this point.

So do you think this "flowchart" style of a quiz can be done in Captivate as a Branching Scenario style quiz? I am re-attaching the PDF of the flowchart I was given. You can ignore the negative scoring you see marked throughout. There will be positive scoring as well, it is just not on the mockup.

[Lilybiri]

You didn't have to tell me that you are completely new to Captivate, but I didn't know that you are even new to eLearning. Why do you accept a job in that case without any background to both eLearning and the very powerful tool 'Captivate'? Sorry for that remark, I am used to be labeled as 'condescending' but I am just expressing my frustration. Would you ever board a plane where the pilot tells you he doesn't understand the technical language used in flying nor had any training? Curse me if you want.

Rod also tells his worries about the LMS, but I wonder if he did see the flowchart at the start of this thread. Due to the situation you probably are not able to talk with the client about some worrying requirements like the fact that you only would need negative scores for answers esteemed to be 'wrong'.  That is the reason I also pointed out that you need to know a lot more about the LMS features.

As for developing that flowchart in Captivate, this can be done by any one with basic skills in Captivate. You don't need to be an expert at all. However my intuition told me that you didn't understand what I offered as tips. You really need basic skills to be able to develop the necessary custom forced navigation based on the ànswers, combined with Branch aware. Not at all difficult, especially if you take the advice to use T/F questions after styling the quizzing master slide. However you need to discuss with your client, based on testing in the LMS or getting more information about its features, about what is possible or where you need a workaround. Such a discussion means that you need ... sorry for repeating ... basic skills.

As for the slides posted, they seem just like PPT, not like an eLearning course at all. That is my decades of experience as trainer, professor and coach which is now appearing, not my Captivate expertise.

Here is a link to a blog with an embedded Captivate tutorial which is using a branched scenario setup to get to conclusions. It was not meant to transfer a 'score' to a LMS, it was in Survey (not graded) style:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/using-cpquizinfoanswerchoice-for-survey-conversion-from-swf-to-html

[RodWard]

Please be kind Lieve.  We all respect your skills. But all of us, yourself included were at one time beginners who had to start learning about Captivate and how to use it to create high quality online learning. 

The learning curve for e-learning is quite steep for newcomers, and Captivate's curve is steeper than most other similar apps due to its power.

There are far too many people in the world now that are struggling to find work due to the pandemic. If Kat V has been fortunate enough to land a job in e-learning and is willing to learn, and reach out to others here to find out things, then we should be happy to help where possible.

[katvsv]

Sorry for frustrating you. I am not an independent contractor--my marketing agency accepted the job and I'm the designer that has been tasked with producing the course. I've spent sleepless nights trying to learn how to use this software in a very short amount of time and i've spent money on a LinkedIn Learning account so I could watch as many training videos as possible.

I just needed to know if this "flowchart" style of quizzing was possible to build in Captivate. I can change how the point system is--it doesn't just have to be negative scoring. I can change it to positive for the correct answers.

The slides I sent are just screenshots of my captivate file. The course works when I preview the html file in my browser.

[Lilybiri]

You don't seem to believe me, that it is perfectly possible to create such a scenario-based workflow in Captivate. If you can separate the possible problems with negative scores and the LMS features, the Captivate workflow is pretty simple. Repeating some of the advices I already offered and then I will leave you to Rod's advices and step away:

• Configure the MCQ,T/F... master slide to suite your design needs, without deleting any of the embedded objects. You find more info about 'embedded objects' under this link. You may need to update Quizzing object styles for that reason.
• Use T/F slides for the slides where you have a 'correct' and 'wrong' answer, slides which need to be scored. Replace 'True' by the correct answer text, 'False' by the wrong one. You may need to increase the height of the individual answer containers. You can use the right click menu to set all answers to the same height and distribute them vertically.
• Keep the number of attempts on those quiz slides to 1 attempt. Use the Success and Last Attempt events on the Actions tab (Quiz Properties) to navigate to the appropriate content slide. A positive score of 10 points will be attached automatically to the quiz slides (you don't need the penalty in that case), but you change that amount (may be necessary depending on the LMS features).
• Do NOT use a default playbar in the project. Eventually you can hide it only for the quiz slides using the Quiz Preferences 
• Turn on Branch aware in those same quiz preferences
• Eventually hide the score slide or customize it.

If you turn off the playbar for the full project, you may need custom navigation buttons. You can use the master slides for that purpose, or add them on the first slide and time them for the rest of the project.

If you use a default Table of Content, do not allow free navigation. With this branched project it would possibly mess up since you need full control over the non-linear flow.

I never asked the question: are you aiming at a responsive or a non-responsive project? Some of the steps are impossible for a responsive project with fluid boxes: you cannot have objects timed for the rest of the project.

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

Your project reminds me of one of my eLearning heroes and a project they did quite a few years back. Check out how Cathy Moore was able to build a similar project for the US Military.
https://blog.cathy-moore.com/2010/05/elearning-example-branching-scenario/ 

I personally think you've done an excellent job of preparing to build what would be considered a superior elearning project, considering your have little experience with this style of learning or any eLearning for that matter.

The key thing you need to do is hide the playbar so that the learner will only use the navigation buttons that you provide on slide and instead of negative scoring you will want to use positive scoring on the correct answer buttons. If you need help with this and have little time I'm sure you can find a fellow contractor who you could sub-contract to help you finish this in time.

[katvsv]

Thank you, Paul! I appreciate your kind words and your help!

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

You're welcome.

Paul

[katvsv]

Paul, I just thought of another question that I hope you'll be able to help me answer.

I have 6 modules in this eLearning course. Can I build each course in separate Captivate files (meaning they would each have their own SCORM package)? So far I have everything built into one Captivate file. 

I'm asking because I would prefer to have the branching roleplay scenario quiz + results by itself instead of lumped in with the results of the other modules' quizzes.

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

Probably. I've found that you can create a single course in most LMS that contains multiple published Captivate modules. There are several advantages but the main thing is that each module can have their own results that feed up into the single course. This also allows you to packages the modules into other courses, perhaps for slightly different audiences. 

[Lilybiri]

Depends also on the LMS. It is easier to manage shorter modules and set up the global workflow with LMS features. A good LMS allows to set up different rules like making the next module vvisible to the learner when she/he has succeeded in a previous module based on the criteria defined in the SCORM setup.