Using what you have to start your eLearning portfolio
I will be ending my Masters in eLearning Design and Development this September and I realised that I have nothing to show the world that I can build eLearning training programmes (let me add that I’m not a guru
like Paul Wilson ). Anyway, I decided that I needed to start somewhere, and considering that I do not have content or materials to play around. So, I decided to convert my research presentation to eLearning.
I was impressed as to how easy it was with Captivate 2019 and how beautiful it came out; the following was even added to give it an unusual twist.
- Animation (Sadly it didn’t work on HTML)
- Music
- Quiz
- Interactions and so much more
You can click to check it out, and the journey has just begun
Good job as a start – I think you’re got a great opportunity here to add some interactivity and really use the tools that Captivate offers!
Good start on this! I agree that the music is too loud. Great point to consider that not all users might like your type of music.
Congratulations! As you convert from PPT file, this is looking good example PPT to eLearning Project.
As professor in a university college, one of the topics I have been teaching was ‘Topography’ which included Triangulation. If I created this topic as a real eLearning course, it would look totally different. Sorry, but I find almost no interactivity, all content appears immediately on each slide, no in-depth explanation, no video, no real animations. Default quiz slides are not really good at testing understanding of that type of subjects.
Sorry, to sound critical, it is just a coincidence that you treat a topic I know very well. You have to know that I am using Captivate since over 10 years for all type of learning, both in a classroom setting and online learning.
I agree about the music being too loud, and not related with the topic. I learned during all those years that audio is very important, but at the first place it should be narration, not just music. Background music is even considered to be rather bad practice in eLearning.
Truly appreciate that you published a course on this portal, and would love to discuss more because at this moment it feels like I am only criticizing. My primary goal is to help as many users as possible with technical Captivate problems but, as in this case, by explaining the meaning of words like ‘interactivity’. pedagogical topics like what I told about using PPT import and background audio.
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Congrats! Short but great elearning sample. However, the background music is too loud for me. I hope it’s okay for others. I like more mellow and low-key background music since I do not want the music divert my attention from the learning material.
The meaning of ‘interactivity’ is not understood the same way by all developers. Reason why I am so critical about the PPT import is that individual objects in PPT will not have an individual timeline after conversion. A presentation is meant to be used by a presenter, which has full control over the flow of the presentation. eLearning courses however are meant to be used by a learner individually. That is a totally different environment.
Personally I revert the situation. I always present with output published from Captivate. After the presentation I will create output meant for the participants from the same source cptx file. That is not a totally interactive course as I meant in my previous answer, but will allow at least some free branching. Here is one example of such a converted presentation:
Could you have done the same starting from a PPT file imported into Captivate?
Totally understand that this is a very easy way to start with eLearning. Personally I never use the PPT conversion in Captivate for several reasons. Since the ppt slides are just converted to movie slides, trying to mimick the animations set up in PPT I find it very restricting. My workflow is to expand the ppt-folder, extract the useful assets and import them into the Library of a new Captivate project, which may be responsive or not. Then I start creating from scratch, bearing in mind that presentations are totally different from real eLearning where as much control as possible has to be given to the learner (called interactivity).
Hi Lieve,
Wow! I like your process, it’s comprehensive, I will adopt that. Nevertheless, I believe you can convert powerpoint slides to a very interactive e-learning course with Captivate, although it might be tasking.
I will try and make another powerpoint and see if it can be interactive as I would want it.
Thanks so much for the insight.
Hi Kokoma,
I have found using PowerPoints to be very helpful in a time crunch. Sometimes you will have someone with a nicely done PowerPoint who needs to quickly get it into eLearning format. I don’t use them for my more important projects but it is definitely handy when you need to knock out something quickly and a good PowerPoint has already been created. Nice job on your first Captivate project!
BTW, a couple of free Captivate templates have recently been posted. Taking one of these and modifying it might be a good learning experience.
Thank you Layli,
I will go check these templates out, I am planning another mini-project, so it comes in handy.
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