Pause the project if the user is inattentive

[arnaldot92812883]

Hi,
I am using Captivate 2019.
The project I am creating foresees that all the slides are timed. But I need that when a user is inattentive (for example when he opens another app or another browser window) the project pauses.
How can I do?

Thanks so much
Angel

[Lilybiri]

You will not like my answer...

As a former professor, may I ask if you really want to treat adults with so much distrust?  Not at all recommended for efficiency of courses, learning and coaching are based on positive attitude, not on a Big Brother Watches You mentality.  

I am happy that there is no easy way to detect 'inattentiveness' in an objective way in Captivate. In Europe that way of control would even be considered a violation of the privacy.  As I told my colleagues in college complaining about students not attending their lectures: try to reflect on your lectures, what is wrong, what is not attractive, how can you improve, what is needed to make students want to come to your classes, to engage theml?  Same for eLearning courses, maybe even more important since most of them are asynchronous. 

[arnaldot92812883]

Hi Lylybiri
I completely agree with you on the effectiveness of a course based on the obligation to watch the screen. My question, however, arises from a request from a client who, to be sure that a student complies with the legal obligation to attend, must pause if the student gets distracted.

[Lilybiri]

Sorry, I don't know about a way to do so. You can tell the client. Personally I would simply refuse to do so, but I understand that you don't like to do that. My stubbornness has got me into troubles in the past with that type of requests. A legal obligation of that type? That would be impossible here in Belgium, since this is contrary to the privacy protection laws. Inserting knowledge check slides, offering more control to the learner, making the course more engaging (more, not less control by learner), adding gamification elements. 

[RodWard]

Actually what you have just described is really very easy to achieve in Captivate or almost any other slide-based e-learning authoring application. 

Just keep each slide short (e.g. 30-60 seconds) and require the learner to click a Next button on that slide to reach the next slide.

This way, if they get distracted, the content will stop at the end of that slide and will not progress without their interaction.

I am in no way agreeing with the idea that this is the 'best' way to create e-learning.  But if your client has a requirement to require the learner shows at least some likelihood of paying attention, then this would fulfil that requirement.

If you want extra points, make the assessment component extra hard to pass so that only those participants that actually paid attention can succeed and make it impossible to achieve completion without that passing score (e.g. allow infinite attempts on the quiz and hide the Continue button on the Quiz Results slide so that it only becomes possible to navigate past Quiz Results to the end of the module with a passing score).

Does this mean you have proven the student paid attention to everything? No, not really.  But it might satisfy your client.

[TLCMediaDesign]

This may help, I answered this in another thread.

You can execte this JavaScript on the first slide onEnter in an advanced action or just execute JavaScript.

It will pause any slide if the tab loses focus. It will then resume when the tab regains focus.

The only caveat with doing it this way is that if it is at the end of a slide, it will resume to the next slide. This can be fixed but it involves more JS to detect the end of a slide.

document.addEventListener('visibilitychange', function(ev)
{
if ( document.visibilityState === 'hidden')
{
window.cpCmndPause = 1;
}
else
{
window.cpCmndResume = 1;
}
});