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Inspiring
January 10, 2013
Question

How can I set a minimum slide view time?

  • January 10, 2013
  • 2 replies
  • 524 views

I am using Captivate 6, and would like users that take my course to be required to view each slide for a minimum of 5 seconds before they can click the Next button. I don't want them to just click Next, Next, Next to burn through the course without any "real" learning moments along the way. My best guess is that it requires Advanced Actions, but I'm not really sure which ones to go with. Does anyone else have a different approach that might work better? I'm all ears, fill me with ideas!

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2 replies

Yung_Hatrack
Known Participant
January 11, 2013

That'd work. But there's another issue [[Warning! TLDR!]]- in my experience you can't force engagement (I've had far more experience USING elearns than I have building them). Either the user is motivated to learn or they're not. Forcing them to spend a minimum of time skimming the content out of sheer boredom through artificially impeding progress will make an already disaffected user either exasperated or furious, while an engaged user won't even notice, because they'll be reading the content.  Unfortunately addressing this is outside of the scope of the designer, as you're dealing with a much bigger issue relating to workplace culture.  It's only my opinion (and maybe I'm just a hippie-throwback), but if you're going into a project with the mindset of designing a learn in such a way as to trap an audience who will, given the option, actively avoid learning, you'll probably produce a much more adversary user experience.  I think sometimes you just need to trust that people will use the tool in the spirit it was intended, because there's a limit to what you can do through design that will actually embed knowledge in an unwilling participant. 

And anyway, to a certain extent it's a self-leveling system.  Those who haven't learned anything fail, either in the broader allegorical sense or in the case of quizzes, literally.

Sorry if this wasn't the place to go into the discussion of the philosophies behind e-learning design, I've done a couple of jobs recently where I've tried (and failed) to convince clients of this same fact, so it's floating right at the top of my mind.

RodWard
Community Expert
January 10, 2013

You cannot control when buttons appear on quiz slides, but all you have to do on normal slides is just set the navigation button on the slide to appear at  5 seconds on the slide timeline.