The result worked great! The learners reviewed the scenario by clicking the back and forward buttons on the Adobe Flash SWF file, and then the learners chose the one best answer… all on the same screen. Our budget did not include audio nor video, but the engaging Flash interactions really added to the learners’ experience (per their course evaluations).

Click to view the quiz demo.

For the original client, I developed the course and the quizzes in SumTotalSystem’s ToolBook Instructor. However, for the past two years, I’ve been using Articulate Studio’s suite of tools (Presenter, Engage, and Quizmaker). I also use Adobe Flash and Adobe Captivate to create additional animated, engaging elements to import into Articulate Presenter’s course player.

So, while a recent project was out for review with the client, I decided to have some fun! What would the old ToolBook Instructor quiz look like as an Articulate Quizmaker ’09 assessment?

Curious? So was I, and I’m fairly pleased with the result. Click the image on the left to view the quiz demo in a new browser window.

In the learners’ eyes, assessments can be (a) intimidating, (b) dry, and (c) downright painful to complete. When we design and develop engaging online courses, it’s nice to know we can carry those same elements into quizzes.

An engaged, excited learner is “Always Learning”, like me, and will gain improved performance and increased knowledge as a result. That should translate to the business’s goals and objectives, improving its performance as well.

I love what I do. Thanks for reading!

The exchange below took place in the Adobe Captivate Group on LinkedIn.com, and I found it very helpful. I’m blogging it so it’s a reference I can refer back to, but if you find it helps you, too, even better!

<<>>

Can anyone tell me the difference between a Rollover Slidelet and a Rollover Image? They appear to do the same thing.

Thanks! Paula Butts
Training Design Specialist at Circles

<<>>

Hello Paula.

In looking through the Adobe Resource Center I found the following definitions. See http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Captivate/3.0/index.html

Rollover slidelet:
Area on a slide that respond to the mouse action by displaying a slidelet–a slide within a slide that has almost all the functionality of a regular slide.

Rollover images:
A rollover image consists of an image and a rollover area (the “hot” area). A rollover image appears when the user moves the mouse over the “hot” area.

Hope this helps.

Bruce E Richards
Research and Instructional Design Coordinator at Missouri State University

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The ‘slide within a slide’ is the key aspect of a slidelet for me. A slidelet has it’s own timeline, separate from the main slide. I’ve used slidelets when I want to have a seaparet SWF file run as part of a rollover.

David Kelly, CPLP
VP, Director of Training at Carver Federal Savings Bank

<<>>

This is timely:
http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2009/04/get_ready_to_wear_that_creativ_1.html

Steve Wilhite
Senior Technical Curriculum Developer at iRise

Cathy Moore has inspired me to give SlideShare.net a try, so I quickly created a PowerPoint 2007 slide show.

For a tutorial, I chose a simple subject: How to change a user’s password in SumTotalSystem’s TotalLMS 7.2, and I used PPT 2007 for the first time since it was recently installed on my computer.

PPT 2007 has some fun, “artsy” features that I enjoyed testing and using. However, it doesn’t currently play well with Articulate Presenter, version 5.2.131, but the Articulate team have a powerful upgrade in Beta that will make beautiful music with PPT 2007. So, until that’s released, I turned to SlideShare.net

Well, SlideShare.net also did not like PPT 2007′s *.pptx nor its *.ppsx file extensions. A simple save-to-PDF worked, and the result is below. The bummer is several lovely font effects don’t convert well, so they disappeared.

Immediate Feedback!

What amazed me is that 4 minutes after I uploaded my slideshow, I got a “thumbs up” vote from SlideShare.net user SRINI. How nice is that! Then, after 30 minutes, the presentation already had 17 Views. Wow.

(Direct hyperlink to the slide show.)

| View | Upload your own

Use SlideShare.net Today!

Give it a try! Create a user account, then upload your work of art. When I uploaded my tutorial file, I ran into a few problems while using Firefox. When I switched over to Internet Explorer, the upload process went quickly and smoothly.

Life is fun when a person is “Always Learning”!

A new, SaaS version of Photoshop, obviously online: Photoshop Express.  It’s free!

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080327/adobe_photoshop.html

Here’s Adobe’s “Mac/Apple”-esque Web site for Photoshop Express:

https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

Even when I’m about to log off and hit the pillow with my sleepy head, I’m “Always Learning”.