randomizing course branches and saving assessment data

[vraskin]

Hi,

I am a newbie to Captivate and eLearning design. I am a programmer by my previous training.

As a final project in my Instructional Design degree, I am planning to build an online course with an integrated controlled experiment on learning styles and built-in assessments.

During the experiment, learners will be randomly assigned different learning styles for the same material.

Question:

Does Captivate provide flexibility to choose randomly study material, possibly based on user ID?

Moreover, I want to store data after learners pass several assessments. Saved data will help to measure retention of the material studied and to evaluate the efficacy of the learning styles.

Question:

Does Captivate provide the flexibility to record data for every learner? I will probably need to capture user IDs, type of the material studied, assessment results, and maybe the time it took them to answer questions in the assessment.

I am wondering where I can read how to do the above.

Thanks.

Viktor.

[RodWard]

If you are a programmer, then you need to think of what Captivate creates as being client-side content only.  This content is usually served from a web server, or if tracking the user interaction with the content is required, then the content will like be served from a Learning Management System.  An LMS is a web-database-driven system that usually communicates with the client-side content using a JavaScript API that conforms to the SCORM standard (though there are other standards as well).

So in your research you need to learn more about Learning Management Systems and SCORM.

Captivate can certainly allow you to build branching into your content so that a given learner might only view SOME of the content but not all.  Check the Captivate HELP files about the Branch Aware feature.

But neither Captivate nor the content it creates will of itself capture and store the data about the user interactions or score.  That's the job of the LMS.