How Adobe has broken the entry barrier to developing eLearning with a more powerful and responsive product! And this loaded question is often narrowed down to two options — Captivate or …? I take the time to peel back the layers of their motivation to uncover and understand what the originator of the question is trying to accomplish. Will eLearning benefit your organization?

What resources budget, time, talent are or will be dedicated to this endeavor? Once we get past this step of verifying the business case for eLearning, my recommendation is to take the plunge and learn Adobe Captivate.

Going from automatic to manual requires a new learning curve as the driver fumbles with the clutch to control the car. Likewise, there are many rapid development tools available for eLearning development, with varying levels of ease-of-learning, but like my car analogy, if you develop your skills with a robust tool such as Captivate, transitioning to any other tool is a breeze and development in a broad sense, more intuitive.

On May 20 th , Adobe released its latest iteration of its flagship eLearning development tool, Captivate 8. The changes to this iteration have truly differentiated Captivate 8 and propelled ahead of any other eLearning authoring tool in its class. The new UI fully embraces a clean flat design, a step up from the prior release.

Not everyone has fallen in love with this change. Some users, particularly advanced users, have openly expressed a dislike for the new UI citing more mouse clicks. And, if you do get to the point where you become hindered by mouse clicks, you have the alternative of using over shortcut keys which adobe has made readily available in this comprehensive list.

But, as a side note, once you develop a certain proficiency with the tool, I encourage you to become familiar with other eLearning development tools. Most advanced eLearning developers have, over the years, built up expertise in several of these tools. Getting started in Captivate 8 is easier than ever because included in the opening splash page off to the right is access to new-user goodies. Clicking on the monitor icon gives the user access to in-product projects to get you up and running quickly.

Need more help? Scrolling down will reveal tutorials on features and functionalities of Captivate. By that I mean there are certain things that need to happen to take that learning material and adapt it to its medium. Creating eLearning is not just about the mechanics of importing a classroom slide presentation into Captivate 8 and publishing it for mobile.

You must consider how your learners will access and consume the content, how much time they can spare on learning, and what they need to get out of the training.

Your responsibility as a developer is to consider these needs when presenting the content and there is no tool out there that will do that for you. Once you take care of these things, you can move forward with creating your eLearning course using — in this case Captivate.

This robust tool does so much more — too much to cover in this post. Adobe recognized the implications of this trend and gave Captivate 8 users the power to create and deliver content for any device without forcing them to learn complex code such as JQuery and HTML5. Captivate 8 does all the coding necessary to take your content and make it adaptive and responsive to any mobile device. What more reason do you need to make Captivate 8 your tool of choice?

How so? Three words — Responsive, Responsive, Responsive. What does that mean to someone making the shift to eLearning and mLearning development? Well, this would be a great place for me to take a step back and explain. I love analogies so here goes…remember back in the early days of mobile devices, particularly the iPhone, displaying websites on such small screens was a real challenge. To address this, web developers decided that building mobile sites was the answer.

These mobile sites got the job done by making bigger pictures and using fewer words but frustrated the user with a diminished browsing experience. And to add further complexity, these tablets started showing up in different screen sizes and resolutions. Why is this responsive design important to eLearning and why should you care? Are you reading this article on a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone?

Our audience, the consumers of our eLearning, will more than likely be consuming content on various devices with various screen sizes and resolutions. Our audience has made the shift to mobile access and now Captivate 8 has made it easy for us to develop learning that works on the devices they use to access it!

Until now, eLearning developers created fixed resolution content and forced it to fit the different screen sizes. What was needed was content that would adapt to its environment. As a beginner, you need to have a starting point; a place of reference to give you context, and Adobe has included different themes with layouts created so you can start developing responsive courses out of the box. But by no means think that your creative genius has been reigned in with these pre-designed themes.

On the contrary, you have some room to customize the themes to suit your specific needs AND save them to use on future projects. Smart Responsive Positioning. This feature gives you the ability to position objects and define their positions relative to the various screen borders. This helps your content maintain a layout that works on the multiple devices you are will be designing for. Captivate 8 locks in to multi-touch technology allowing you to create courses that allow your learners to tap, scroll, pinch, zoom and swipe their way through courses.

Enabling scrolling gives you the flexibility on mobile screens to handle content spill over. These types of interactions have all been developed with slide based learning in mind.

No discussion regarding Captivate 8 should ignore the richness and potential opportunities of utilizing the GPS functionality that comes baked in to this release. Creating courses in Captivate 8 takes advantage of the GPS of mobile devices to deliver localized content including language and images appropriate to the location of the learner. Something you should keep in mind when considering all of this responsiveness is that even though you can migrate courses created in Captivate 6 and 7 to Captivate 8, you will not be able to convert them into responsive courses.

Any responsive course will have to be created in Captivate 8. Captivate 8 has dozens of new features and added functionality such as support for roll over and down states for Smart Shapes, importing HTML5 and Edge Animations, and native support for WebObjects that far outweigh any cons.

My intent is not to overwhelm you with too much detail about the features. Rather, my goal is to show you how Adobe has made a compelling case why anyone transitioning to or in the early stages of eLearning development should give Captivate 8 some serious thought.

I am convinced that Captivate 8 is the tipping point for many eLearning developers, new and experienced alike! You must be logged in to post a comment.

Show All Notifications. Join Community. Sign In. Post here. Virtual Reality. Events and Announcements. Free Projects. Learning Hub. AEW Recordings. Interactive eLearning. Personalize background. Software simulation. Responsive simulation. Full motion recording. Advanced actions. Conditional actions. Learning interactions. Drag and Drop interactions. Deprecated features. Adobe eLearning Conference. Adobe Learning Summit. Adobe Captivate Specialist Roadshows.

Account settings. Adobe Captivate Prime. Auto enrollment using learning plans. Automating user import. Classroom trainings. Course level reports. Create custom user groups. Customize email templates. Employee as learners. Gamification and badges. Harvard ManageMentor. Integration with Adobe Connect and other video conferencing tools.

Integration with Salesforce and Workday. Integration with third-party content. Internal and external users. Learner transcripts.

 
 

 

Download free tutorials and courses on adobe captivate 8 – Documents PDF

 

Auto enrollment using learning plans. Automating user import. Classroom trainings. Course level reports. Create custom user groups. Customize email templates. Employee as learners. Gamification and badges. Harvard ManageMentor. Integration with Adobe Connect and other video conferencing tools. Integration with Salesforce and Workday.

Integration with third-party content. Internal and external users. Learner transcripts. Managing user groups. Overview of auto-generated user groups. Self-Paced trainings. Set up announcements. Set up external users. Set up gamification.

Set up internal users. Types of course modules. Virtual classroom trainings. Adobe Connect Mobile. Virtual Conferences. Unified Communications. New to eLearning? Try Adobe Captivate 8! Pooja Jaisingh Follow. Home Events and Announcements Announcements Follow. June 2, Pooja Jaisingh. Pooja Jaisingh works as a principal eLearning evangelist at Adobe. She has created several award-winning eLearning courses and eBooks, and regularly conducts workshops and webinars on Adobe eLearning tools and services.

In her previous roles, she has worked as a teacher trainer, instructional designer, and chief learning geek. Staff 76 posts. Followers: people. So what can Captivate 8 do for you? As a beginner you may be interested in: Creating software simulations Editing slides using PowerPoint within Captivate, one of my favorite features Drag and Drop interactions This robust tool does so much more — too much to cover in this post. Smart Responsive Positioning This feature gives you the ability to position objects and define their positions relative to the various screen borders.

Mobile Responsive Gesture-Enabled Features Captivate 8 locks in to multi-touch technology allowing you to create courses that allow your learners to tap, scroll, pinch, zoom and swipe their way through courses.

Geo-location Responsiveness No discussion regarding Captivate 8 should ignore the richness and potential opportunities of utilizing the GPS functionality that comes baked in to this release. The Tipping Point Captivate 8 has dozens of new features and added functionality such as support for roll over and down states for Smart Shapes, importing HTML5 and Edge Animations, and native support for WebObjects that far outweigh any cons.

Adobe Captivate 8. New UI. Rapid Authoring. Responsive Simulations. Responsive Themes. Add Comment. Cancel You must be logged in to post a comment.

Subscribe to our newsletter. That’s it! Recording Link. You must be logged in to post a comment. Show All Notifications. Join Community. Sign In. Post here. Virtual Reality.

Events and Announcements. Free Projects. Learning Hub. AEW Recordings. Interactive eLearning. Personalize background. Software simulation. Responsive simulation. Full motion recording. Advanced actions. Conditional actions. Learning interactions. Drag and Drop interactions. Deprecated features. Adobe eLearning Conference. Adobe Learning Summit. Adobe Captivate Specialist Roadshows. Account settings. Adobe Captivate Prime.

Auto enrollment using learning plans. Automating user import. Classroom trainings. Employee as learners. Gamification and badges. Harvard ManageMentor. Integration with Adobe Connect and other video conferencing tools. Integration with Salesforce and Workday.

Integration with third-party content. Internal and external users. Learner transcripts. Managing user groups. Overview of auto-generated user groups. Self-Paced trainings. Set up announcements. Set up external users. Set up gamification. Set up internal users. Types of course modules. Virtual classroom trainings. Adobe Connect Mobile. Virtual Conferences. Unified Communications. Adobe Captivate Tutorials. Responsive Design Overview Learn about the basics of creating responsive courses with Adobe Captivate 8.

Text formatting for different breakpoints in Adobe Captivate 8 Learn about the different text formatting options for different breakpoints in Adobe Captivate 8.

Device-aware Delivery with Adobe Captivate 8 Learn how Adobe Captivate 8 enables you to serve content the learners based on their device OS and viewport size.

Gesture Support for Adobe Captivate 8 Courses Learn how to leverage the instinctive gestures that allow learners to tap, scroll, pinch, and swipe their way through courses. Responsive Simulations in Adobe Captivate 8 Learn how to create a single screen capture project that works across devices with Adobe Captivate 8.

Location-aware Learning with Adobe Captivate 8 Learn how to utilize the GPS capabilities to deliver timely, location-aware content such as assessments that require learners to be at a particular geo-location with Adobe Captivate 8. Removing Popups from Your Recording in Adobe Captivate 8 Learn how to get rid of the annoying notifications that pop up in the middle of your video demonstrations using Adobe Captivate 8.

Smart Shape Enhancements in Adobe Captivate 8 Learn how to customize the shapes and convert them into buttons and choose different styles to indicate the up, hover, and down states in Adobe Captivate 8. Enhancements in Shared actions in Adobe Captivate 8 Learn about the new enhancements in shared actions and variable parameterization in Adobe Captivate 8.

Adobe Captivate 7 Adobe Captivate 7: Drag and Drop Interaction Learn how to make eLearning fun with drag and drop games, quizzes, and learning modules that can run on desktops and iPads. Bring in objects, animations and multimedia, easily update the content, and keep your PowerPoint and Adobe Captivate projects in sync with the dynamically linked import option. Themes Learn how to choose from attractive, professionally designed themes that blend backgrounds, styles, fonts, and layouts.

Apply them across projects to maintain a consistent look and feel. You can also customize themes to suit your requirements. Smart learning interactions Learn how to insert aesthetically designed interactive elements to eLearning content with just a click. Actors Learn how to tell your eLearning story more effectively using human characters.

Select from a wide range of out-of-the-box actors making various gestures to give your eLearning a more personal touch. Set them against relevant backgrounds to make your scenarios look more realistic.

High-definition HD screencast Learn how to easily create high-quality product demos with the new capture-as-a-video workflow.

Edit video, and add transitions, smart shapes, audio, and captions. Insert a talking head or another video in a picture-in-picture format. Publish it to YouTube with a single click. Audio response Learn how to make your eLearning more personal by providing audio responses in content and quizzes. Record voice, convert text to speech, or import external sounds, and play them back when learners click on an object. Smart Shapes Learn how to introduce the Audio workflows, we had a two-part series training session discussing different options available to add, record and edit audio, add Text-to-Speech, etc.

Reflections Learn how to add a new dimension to text, images, and even videos using reflections. Object grouping Learn how to group a set of smart shapes, images, or other objects so that you can work with them collectively. Resize, rotate, time, flip, move, or format all the objects in the group as if they were a single object.

Hyperlinks Learn how to insert text hyperlinks to direct learners to other sections of the course or external sources for more information.