Intro

Multistate objects did change my workflows in Captivate a lot when they were introduced. Use the tag 'multistate object' or 'states' in my blog to see this proved. However I often miss the possibility to follow up states. There is no system variable for that purpose. Partially due to some questions on the forums, I set up some use cases to see the usefulness of state tracking. In this introduction you'll find a Captivate published output of 4 use cases and a short summary of the basic setup I used.

Example 

Check the tutorial below. These are the four use cases:

1. Three identical multistate objects are used, and learner needs to reconstruct a physical formula by clicking through the states. Two solutions are correct:
   

   

2. Four identical multistate objects, and another formula (related with the previous one). A lot more combinations are possible here, both sides need to result in the same Force.
3. One multistate object, being a Carousel of 10 shapes (fSVG  text). Some requests (forum question):
      Flag number needs to be shown
      Back button only visible when in second state
      Forward button only hidden when in last state
      Next button on slide may appear only when all states have been visited
4. Slot machine with 3 identical multistate objects having 8 states.

You can reach the rescalable version of this example using this link, or watch the embedded one below.

For the design I used some slides from the Quick Start Project 'Diverse'.

Basics for  Setup

Tracking variable

For each multistate object a user variable is defined. It will store the tracking number. I choose to have numbers identifying the state, with Normal being state 1, or in programming language: index starts with 1. None of the multistate objects in the example project has an 'empty' Normal state. If that were the case, the index could have been 0 which is the common approach for most system variables. However the system variable cpInfoCurrentSlide also has an index starting with 1.

For the use cases the state commands 'Go to Next State' and/or 'Go to Previous State' are used. So, it is necessary to reset the variable when either the last state or the first state is reached, to get a correct value in all situations.

Example for the first formula: once the third state is reached, the variable needs to be rest to 1 for the next click.

Events

This is more of a general tip when using advanced/shared actions. It is easier to set up a workflow if you can spread the actions over multiple events.  

For the first two use cases (formula): the multistate objects are interactive which leads to the use of a shared action because the check of the answer is done by clicking a button. This is also more user friendly: control over submitting the answer is given to the learner.

For the Carousel the multistate object is not interactive. Only the success events of the Forward and Back button are used. You'll see in the videos that this makes the action more complicated because all situations need to be cared for.

The slot machine is using JS for a random number and a While command, and can be triggered by the multistate object which is interactive. I added a Check button, to avoid a very complicated action. It is also the only example where I provided a Reset button (see previous blog).

On Enter event is used to reset variables and the situation on a slide. This is necessary when you allow to revisit the slides, but also because I tend to reuse variables.

State Choice

In the specific use cases of the formulas, the state tracking variable is used with mathematical operators to check for the correct answer. In that case it is important to choose a correct sequence for the states.

Example for the first use case: 'Force' is in the third state, because the used check function is to create the sum of the tracking variables for the first and the second state (1+2) which needs to be equal to 3 (third state). 

How?

I will post workflows for the use cases, including (interactive) video in future posts.

Intro

This is a short blog post, answering a software simulation (assessment mode) question on the forum. If you are interested, here is the link.

You probably know that in such an assessment scores are attached to one interactive object on each slide: either a click box or a Text Entry Box.It offten happens that the same action can be done by clicking more than one 'target' on the slide, which will need customizing that slide to add at least one extra click box, which will also be scored. However that will lead to a results slide where the acquired percentage is not correct. Reason is that all scored objects are included in the total score. You can verify that easily in the Advanced Interaction panel, to be opened from the Project menu or with the shortcut key F9. Here is an example. Slide 59 has two target click boxes, both are scored.

The OP wants to show the correct percentage to the learner in the project, but for the reporting to the LMS Pass/Fail reporting is sufficient which can be done by basing it on the required pass points.

Variables

• A while ago this blog post described using the system variables used in the Results slide: Quizzing System Variables. For this blog post the relevant system variables are:

cpQuizInfoTotalQuizPoints: will have the value you see at the top of the Advanced Interaction panel, and is not correct in this case because it includes the scores of the extra target click boxes.

cpQuizInfoPointsscored: will be correct because on each quiz slide only one of the targets can be clicked.

cpInfoPercentage: is calculated from both previous variables and will be lower than expected for the learner.

cpQuizInfoPointsPerQuestionSlide: this system variable is not behaving as expected for slides with multiple scored objects. It will NOT show the total score of the slide, but the score of ONE scored object. I will presume that in case of a slide with two target click boxes, both of them will have the same score. This is also valid if you prefer shape buttons instead of click boxes.

Since there  is no need to transfer the percentage to the LMS, it is possible to use user variables. Create these variables:

v_TotalScore: will replace the system variable cpQuizInfoTotalQuizPoints

v_TooMuch: will store the total score of the extra click boxes. I assume that click boxes on the same slide have the same score.

v_Percentage: will store the result of the calculation from v_TotalScore and cpQuizInfoPointsscored

Workflow

Simple

The easiest way would be to count the number of extra targets. If all the click boxes have the same score of 1 point you could calculate the correct percentage with this advanced action:

You can trigger this advanced action with the On Enter event of the custom Score slide. It will allow you to display the correct Percentage. 

Advanced

Situation becomes bit more complicated if not dual targets (click box/shape button) have the same score (of 1 point). In that case you can take advantage of the weird behavior of the quizzing system variable cpQuizInfoPointsPerQuestionSlide  (see above). I used this shared action, triggered by the Success action of the targets, and the 'Last Attempt' action which is used here (Success action on a background Shape covering the complete slide). I assumed that the Last Attempt action of the targets is set to No Action. That typical workflow was used by the OP, and explained in this blog post. 

You see that this shared action has no parameters, you could also create an identical advanced action, if you still fear shared actions. My main reasons for this choice:

• Shared action can have a small description
• Shared action appears in the Library, which make it easier to check the Usage
• This shared action has no parameters, so it takes the same time as the advanced action to be applied to all the necessary events.
• It is much easier to transfer this shared action to another Project.

There is a small change to the action to be triggered On Enter for the Results slide:

Conclusion

On the Results slide you can insert most of the default fields, an overview:

• You scored:  the system variable cpQuizInfoPointsscored is correct
• Maximum score: you need to replace the system variable by the user variable v_TotalScore
• Correct questions: will be OK, it is the system variable cpQuizInfoTotalCorrectAnswers
  
• Total Questions: will not be OK, you could add a supplementary command to the shared action similar to replace the system variable cpQuizInfoTotalQuestionsPerProject by a decremented user variable.
• Accuracy: you need to replace the system variable cpInfoPercentage by the user variable v_Percentage
• Attempts: will be OK, it is the system variable cpQuizInfoAttempts

Intro

Coincidence because this blog, answer to another forum question, is an alternative workflow to my most recent blog post about Software Simulation Assessments.

Summary of the request:

• Learner needs to click a specific region, two attempts are allowed.
• On Success the Success message appears and the project advances to the next slide.
• On First failure a Hint message appears and an arrow indicates where to click. Moreover a Retry button appears.
• When the Retry button is clicked the Hint text and arrow should disappear.
• If second attempt is successful, Success message appears and the project advances to the next slide.
• If the second attempt is failed, a Sorry message appears with a Continue button to go to the next slide.

Contrary to the previous article, the slide is created manually (no click boxes are added automatically as in a simulation). For that reason I preferred shape buttons over click boxes. A shape button can be made invisible by setting Opacity and Stroke to zero.

The same idea is at the origin of the workflow: at the bottom of the Timeline, a shape button (invisible to the learner) covering the full slide is added. Have a look at this screenshot of the Timeline of the first slide (Flags):

The Success event of this big shape button will trigger the FailureAct action to show the Failure messages. 

Sample project

Watch a scalable version using this link. The fixed resolution version is below:

The Timeline screenshot of the first slide (Flags) shows the objects on this slide, from bottom to top:

• The shape button covering the slide SB_Back. This button will trigger an advanced action 'FailureAct' with the Success event!
• Gr_Flags groups the four flag images
• Title which function as instruction
• A multistate shape SS_Failure. The normal state is invisible (same as the shape buttons), it has a state for the two Failure situations. The Hint message is stored in a user variable v_hint. Reason: this allows to time this message shape for the rest of the project. The workflow is needed in a sequence of similar slides, message can be hidden when no longer needed.
  

  
• Shape button SB_Next, also a multistate object. I took out the Rollover and Down states, but it has a custom state 'Second' where the label changed to 'Continue'. 
  

  
• Shape button SB_Flags, multistate object where the custom state 'Indicator' adds the arrow pointing to the correct location. This shape button is 'invisible' and over the Belgian flag on the first slide, over Portugal in the second slide (see screenshot belos). One of the advantages of shape buttons over click buttons: they can have custom states, and you can edit the form, needs not to be a rectangle:
  

  
• The Text caption is added to show the state of the variable v_attempt. It is part of the debugging workflow, and I forgot to hide it before publishing.

Step-by-step

Variables

Two user variables are needed:

1. v_attempt: has a start value of 0 and will be incremented on each failure (which is a click on the button SB_Backx).
2. v_hint: will store the text to appear on the Hint message (first failure). Careful: you will need to increase the length of the inserted variable because 50 will not be sufficient in most cases.
   

   

FailureAct (Advanced Action)

This action is triggered by the Success event of the shape button SB_Back. The OP preferred to avoid Shared actions. You can assign this action to that shape button on the first slide, but you'll need a duplicate advanced action for each slide, because the color marked items need to be changed:

CleanAct (Advanced Action)

EnterAct (Shared Action)

Success?

For the Success situation I just kept the default Success message. This is the Actions tab for the shape button SB_Flags and similar:

Two messages are allowed, Success 'caption' (is a shape) is activated, and the Last Attempt action is set to 'No action'.

Overview

The Advanced Interaction panel shows which actions are attached to which events:

Intro

Thanks to a question on the Adobe forum: ‘How to have two different Failure messages for click boxes in a software simulation, assessment mode?’, I created a sample project showing the solution, and will explain the workflow step-by-step. It has become a pretty long article, be prepared.

At this moment multiple Failure messages  (up  to 3) depending on the number of the attempt, are only possible for question slides. A click box nor a button have that functionality. Moreover interactive objects, question slides, Drag&Drop slides have only two events to trigger an action: Success and Last Attempt. This means that you cannot use the first attempt to change a situation at all. Of course you could add events using JavaScript or InfoSemantics CpExtra widget. I accepted the challenge to try to figure this out only with Captivate’s features.

Example project

Watch this project either with the embedded fixed resolution version below, or by clicking this link for a rescalable one (recommended).

Step-by-step workflow

Slide setup

Have a look at the Timeline of the first slide with a scored click box:

From bottom to top you have

• A shape button, labeled ‘SB_Back2’ (because this was slide 2 in the project). That interactive object covers the complete slide and needs to be at the bottom, behind the original click box. This means that such a workflow is impossible in a fluid box where stacking is prohibited. It may seem better to create a SVG (used as button) which has a ‘hole’ corresponding with the original click box. However that would be a lot of work, since that click box will be in another location on all slides. Only the Success event of this shape button will be used, and you can leave the number of attempts at Infinite or 1, doesn’t matter.
  Check the screenshot of the Properties, Actions tab: the Success message which appears when the Back button is clicked will act as First Failure message. You may call this ‘cheating’.
  This back button is triggering a shared action labeled ‘BackAct’.
  

  
• The shape ‘SS_Hint’ has no role in the workflow, was in this assessment as help.
• CB_Assess is the original click box inserted in the software sim, assessment mode. The OP provided 2 attempts, but that has to be changed to 1 (see further). I deactivated the Failure message, and kept only the Success message. You see the Properties of this click box to the right. I didn’t use the Failure message, but replaced it by a multistate shape.
  The action On Success is to proceed to the next slide with the next action to be done by the learner. Since there is only one attempt, the Last Attempt action is a Failure action. It is an advanced action ‘FailAct’.
  

  

  It is impossible to have states for the default feedback messages of interactive objects. You can see in the Timeline that this multistate shape is labeled SS_Failure and that it is displayed for the rest of the project, always on top. Its visibility is triggered by state changes.

• The Failure message, which is the second message, is labeled ‘SS_Failure’ and you see the two states in this screenshot. The Normal state is completely transparent and has not text. The state ‘Second’ has the failure message, and the multistate object will be hidden until the ‘second’ Failure attempt happens. 
  

  

Actions

FailAct  (Advanced action)

This action is triggered by the Last Attempt event of the Click box. 

The Failure shape is shown, and will have the Second state in place (see below in the shared action ‘BackAct’. Since it is not a default feedback message, it will not appear automatically nor leave the slide paused for 3 seconds as will be the case for the Success message. That is the reason for the Delay command, followed by navigation to the next slide.

You see that this advanced action will be the same for all the click boxes, because of the Timing of the SS_Failure message for the rest of the project.

BackAct (Shared action)

This action is triggered by the Success event of the shape button SB_Back2. 

Because there are so many instances of that shape button, I largely prefer using a shared action over duplicated edited advanced actions. In the next part (other slides) you’ll see how to avoid having to enter the parameters on each slide. Here is the screenshot of that action, with the indication of its parameters:

The state of the Failure message will be changed to show the ‘second’ message when the click box is not correctly clicked. To allow such a failure you need to hide the back shape button so that a click outside of the click box is possible. But since you don’t want the Failure message to appear right away, you need to hide it. As you could see it will be made visible with the Last Attempt advanced action. Sequence of the actions is very important here: you need to change the state before hiding.

ResetAct (Shared action)

This action will be triggered On Enter for each slide with a scored click box. Since the OP provided multiple attempts on quiz level, I needed also to take into account that the slide will be revisited and custom objects have to be reset in their original status. Custom objects are the shape Back button (SB_Backx) and the multistate shape used for the second Failure message (SS_Failure). That explains why I preferred a shared action with these three parameters:

This is the screenshot of the action with parameters filled in for the first slide:

Slides setup (after first slide)

1. Slides with a Click Box

• SS_Failure: since this shape is timed for the rest of the project, you don’t have to do anything on slides with a click box.
• SB_Backx: the shape button covering the slide. I recommend to copy/paste SB_Back2 from the slide with the first click box, having the Shared action ‘FailAct’ applied to it. Take the time to rename the new copy which will have a generic name starting with SB_Back. I prefer to just change the number to the slide number. It is very important that you send this new instance to the Back, using either the right-click menu, Arrange or the Align toolbar, Arrange options.

  
  The attached shared action will be edited automatically to use the correct Back button for the slide.

• EnterAct: needs to be applied manually to the slide. There is no workaround, you’ll need to choose the correct parameters. Only the first parameter (SB_Backs) is different, both the failure message and its state are always the same.

2. Slides with Text Entry Boxes, FMR or Video Demo slides, Static slides, Results slide

The two failure messages were only needed for the click boxes. You’ll need a simple On Enter action to make sure that the Failure shape has been hidden. With static slides I mean the very short slides which sometimes appear during capture and eventually intermediate explanation slides. You can use the Advanced Interaction panel to help with this setup. Here is an example of this panel for some slides:

Watch the labeling of the Shape back buttons on slides with Click boxes, and the applied actions to the Back button, the Click box and On Enter.

Slide 7 has a Text Entry box and shows the simple State action to hide the Failure message.

This project had 26 interactive objects, Click boxes and Text Entry Boxes. Each of them has a score of 1pt, which leads to the total score showing at the top. It is that score which is stored in the quizzing system variable cpQuizInfoTotalProjectPoints/cpQuizInfoTotalQuizPoints and is used for calculating the displayed fields on the Results slide.

Conclusion

My apologies for this rather long blog post, where I tried to explain the full workflow in detail. A simple question, however with not a real simple answer, agreed? Questions are always welcome. Post them in the comment.

Intro

Another post meant as answer to a more complicated question in the Adobe forums. You can find the (long) thread under this link. Title 'Play different audio on slide revisit' is not covering the final required situations. I will explain the end situation in short terms.

• Project has a menu slide with 4 buttons. Each of the buttons jumps to a chapter of the course. There is narration on this slide, which needs CC and that means it has to be slide audio. That slide has staggered items synchronizing with the narration, and also several  effects applied to objects. The learner can click each button multiple times. Buttons are all active.
• At the end of each chapter the learner returns to the menu slide. On return the playhead should skip immediately towards the end of the slide, when all the objects are in place and narration has finished. Except...
  
• When the four buttons have been clicked at least once another audio clip needs to be played. That clip doesn't need CC.

The solution is less easy than I thought, hence this blog post. 

Example project

I created a barebone project for testing, using some slides from the Quick Start Project Safety. Have a look, to understand better what I explained about the request.

The course has 7 slides:

• Slide 1: Title (poster image is based on this first slide)
• Slide 2 = menu slide
• Slides 3-6: one slide for each chapter
• Slide 7: End slide

Analysis

The menu slide should appear in 3 possible states:

1. First visit: default state, play head will start from the first frame and pause at the pausing point, narration (slide audio) and effects will be visible.
2. Later visits, when not all buttons have been clicked at least once: audio shouldn't play and no need to wait for the staggered objects and their effects. The easiest way to realize both is using the shared action explained in this blog post:
   Force first view and/or play audio only on first visit
3. Visit when all buttons have been clicked at least once: situation like in 2 BUT another audio clip needs to play. At the end of that clip something needs to happen. I choose to jump to the end slide, but this can be replaced easily by another command.

Have a look at the Timeline of the menu slide in the Example project:

You see the staggered objects including an entrance effect. Those are the white numbered shape buttons. The meaning of the top most button (SB_Done) will be explained below but you see that it has audio attached (object audio).

Step-by-step workflow

Variables

Create the user variables shown in this screenshot. The tracking variables (one per chapter) v_1 - v_4 are Booleans, default value =0. The variable v_skip will be populated with the duration of the narration audio clip in seconds. The variable v_audio gets the duration of the final audio clip. As indicated in its description v_buttons is meant for the sum of the tracking variables, which will be calculated whenever the menu slide is revisited.

Button SB_Done

Since it proved to be impossible to use Play Audio for the final audio clip in the project, I opted to use Object Audio. That type of audio plays when the object appears, or is made visible.  The shape button which I use is invisible because both Opacity (fill) and Stroke are set to 0. The eye button in its Properties is marked 'Invisible in Output'. The audio clip is added in the Options tab. The action nor the attempts matter, since the Jump to the last slide will not be done by clicking this invisible button. Have a look at the Style and Options tab in these screenshots:

ReturnAct (shared action)

This action is triggered by the success event of the Return buttons at the end of each chapter, it is pretty simple to understand from the Preview screenshot:

EnterAct (advanced action)

This action is triggered by the On Enter event of the menu slide, takes care of the three possible situations (see Analysis above). Both conditional decisions are mutually exclusive because they are based on the value of the sum variable v_Buttons.

I could have used JS to calculate the value of v_buttons to avoid the sequence of the 3 Expression commands.

If you want to reuse this action for other projects, I would recommend to convert it in a shared action. Be careful with the two literals (duration of both audio clips). They can be tricky, and it may be better to replace them by variables getting their value in the Variables dialog box.

Overview: Advanced Interaction

This screenshot shows all events and actions in the example project.

Intro

This course offers a detailed (video) workflow how to create and use for Drag&Drop objects.

The video is also available as standalone on YouTube, can be skipped in the interactive Captivate tutorial. The tutorial has also a Table of Content in Overlay, to allow complete free navigation.

The mastered skills are used for two games, which also take advantage of the available InBuilt states for Drag&Drop objects. More detailed workflow for the games will appear as blog posts. I used Ready-to-go slides from the Quick Start Project 'Business', non-responsive version.  Some licensed images from Adobe Stock were used as well. 

You can watch the tutorial as scalable HTML output from this link (recommended- or watch the embedded fixed resolution output below:

Intro

This is the fifth blog post about default Quizzing slides. Five of the compulsory master slides in any theme are linked with Quizzing. For this article the type of project is important: non-responsive project, responsive project with Fluid Boxes, Responsive project with Breakpoints. Same master slides are used for Pretest and Knowledge Check slides.

With CP2019 Overlay Knowledge Check slides are available in an Interactive Video. Those slides also use the master slides in the chosen theme. The Quiz slides in a VR project however cannot be formatted using master slides at this moment. You have to accept the default styling. It is possible to edit the text containers (mostly shapes) but that has to be done on each slide individually. I sincerely hope that formatting functionality will be extended in next versions.

As for the object styles, for master slides editing depends on the type of project: non-responsive (can be published as scalable HTML output), responsive with Fluid boxes, responsive with Breakpoints. Between those types master slides are not interchangeable.

Non-responsive project

In the previous posts Terminology and Submit Process I explained the meaning of Embedded Objects on the quizzing master slides as being objects without an individual Timeline. You find them on the four master slides for Quizzes. They appear as placeholder on inserted Quiz slides. Each of them is using a dedicated Object style from the Quizzing Category (see Object Style Manager). As I wrote in Preferences it is a bit confusing that for the included Captivate themes, the default feedback messages use shapes as container, not captions which means you cannot change them directly for the Default Labels dialog box where only caption styles are available.

The background of the quizzing master slides can be set up like any other master slide. Since they have a lot of placeholder objects (mostly shapes) which can be styled individually you will mostly see either:

• Master Slide Background: this means that the background of the Main Master slide is inherited. Often that will be a solid color, a gradient or eventually a not invasive texture image.
• Custom: if the Main Master slide background is not suited, you need to use this option where you’ll find again a solid color, a gradient or a texture.

However feel free to use an image as background. Or you can override the background on individual quiz slides by inserting an image. Since the embedded objects are always on top of the stack, that image will automatically  be below the quiz objects.

Tips

1. Use Guides (see Guides Rule) if you want to edit the layout of the placeholders, if you need a Matching, Hotspot and/or Likert question for your course to have a consistent design with the more common MCQ,T/F… questions sharing the same master slide.
2. If you have a dark background, you can have issues with Matching slides: the link lines between the two columns are black, not possible to edit that color. Moreover since you probably would want a light color for text, the dropdown list will be unreadable. Solution is to create a duplicate master slide, where you put a light shape under Answer Area, and change font color to a dark color (new object style).
   

   
3. If you expect to have multiline answers, the Answer area can be too small. It is not possible to edit the individual answer shapes n the master slides (which is a pity), that has to be done on the quiz slides. Increasing the height of the Answer area will make the workflow easier. Decrease the height of the other placeholders. That is possible for the Question title, the Feedback messages. Be careful with the Question placeholder: questions can also need more than one line. Eventually you can move the Progress indicator next to the Question title, to free up more space for the Answer Area.
4. If you want some quiz slides including an image, create another duplicate of the master slide. Decrease the width of the Answer area and insert an image placeholder as shown in this screenshot:
   

   
5. In any custom theme I create, I will always edit the results master slide: drag the Retake button over the Review button. It will avoid that the learner is confused when quiz is set up with multiple attempts, and Review is enabled. Design of Captivate’s quiz means that all attempts are considered to be exhausted  if the learner clicks the Review button. Moving that button will not cause any problems. If there is only one attempt, the Retake button is not appearing, and the Review button is visible immediately. If there is no Review functionality, no problem neither.
   If you want to override the design, and allow Review before a Retake, but without showing the correct answers, you could use the workflow described in Review before Retake.

Responsive project – Fluid Boxes

An in-depth exploration of the quizzing master slides in the Fluid Boxes themes is described in this article.

Every embedded object is in its (normal) fluid box, with the exception of the feedback messages sharing a static fluid box.  That is necessary to save space, they are stacked which is not possible in a normal fluid box.

Some of the tips mentioned for non-responsive projects are also valid for this type of project:

1. Use of Guides is strongly recommended. For responsive projects rulers are in %. I know that CP2019 allows to use Position Properties panel for fluid boxes, but I find setting up a grid with Guides much quicker.
2. For Matching questions using a dark background: fill the fluid box of the Answer area with a lighter (semi-transparent) color, and change the font color to avoid the mentioned problems. Do this on a duplicate master slide (MCA, T/F…).
3. In the article mentioned above, I described the workflow for long answers in the Answer area. Instead of resizing the placeholders you need to resize the fluid boxes.
4. For the duplicate master slide allowing adding an image, you’ll have create two fluid boxes in the present fluid box for the Answer area. That means taking out first the content by unlocking from Fluid box, dragging it into the scratch area. Create two horizontal child fluid boxes. Relock the answer area to FB and redrag it into one of the new child fluid boxes. You can insert a placeholder in the second child fluid box.
5. The easy workflow described for a non-responsive project is not possible. The buttons are in a normal fluid box, stacking is not possible. Here a real tweak is needed. Tweaks and special situations will be explained in later blog posts.

Responsive project with Breakpoints

I have to confess that the toughest part of this type of projects is getting the quiz slides behave properly on all mobile devices. Although in some cases I prefer this type of responsive project for content slides because of the real freedom of design allowing to reduce layouts for small screens to the bare minimum by replacing items, quiz slides are a real pain.

It is very important to set up the object styles properly, especially those where fonts are included. Full explanation is to be found in ‘Object styles for Responsive Projects’.

The problem has become bigger, because Captivate no longer has included themes for Breakpoints as was the case until CP9. I still continue to use those themes, especially for the Quizzing master slides. At least they provide a start for setting up the responsiveness. For the rest a lot of testing (trial and error) is needed.

Most of the tips mentioned for non-responsive projects are fully valid, taken into account that you need to use the Position Properties to make all items responsive. No limitations however as for Fluid boxes: stacking is allowed, grouping is allowed etc… You can drag the Review button under the Retake button.

Next?

This fifth post was supposed to be the last one in the sequence about default quiz slides. However I will add another one explaining partial scores and penalties, after seeing several questions in the social media. You should now have a pretty complete overview now. Next articles will be about tweaking the default design (submit process, use of feedback images, use of audio…) and special situations like Branch aware, Pretest setup, Remediation. custom quiz slides, …

I also strongly recommend to get acquainted with the category 'Quizzing' of the system variables.

Intro

In previous articles I talked about these topics:

• Terminology of Quizzes, including the different types of quiz slides within Captivate
• Submit Process, including an overview of the Embedded objects
• Attempts and Scores: for normal or random quiz slides

Differences between Knowledge Check slides and Quiz slides are fully explored in this article.

This part has its focus on the Quiz Preferences. some of them have to be set up preferably before inserting any quiz slide, or creating a question pool. The same is the case for editing the design of the quizzing master slides which will be the topic of the 5th post in the series. Up till now the described content was valid for  non-responsive projects, responsive projects with Fluid Boxes and responsive projects with Breakpoints. That will also be the case for the Preferences. Sorry for this very lengthy article, sometimes bit boring but I didn't find an in-depth explanation anywhere else.

Preferences to set up BEFORE inserting quiz slides

It is also important to set up the design of quiz slides in the master slides before inserting questions, but in case you want to edit later on, it is possible. However this part of the Preferences needs to be done imperatively before inserting quiz slides. It concerns the default messages to appear, the labels on buttons etc. Too bad, not everything can be found in the same location in Preferences. And the amount of items to be edited can be different depending on the type of ‘quiz’ slides. Will try to structure everything as completely as possible for each type.

Default labels

This is the most intuitive location in Quiz Preferences.  The number of fields showing up can be different. This is a screenshot of the dialog box for normal quiz slides:

The first part of the dialog box shows the text for all the messages. I changed the text for the Correct and Incorrect Message. That change will NOT show up in the Master slides! That is the reason I insist on making those changes before inserting quiz slides. Resetting the Master slide cannot be used on existing quiz slides to revert to the changed labels.  Since I have to create courses i multiple languages, I have exported Preferences with those edited labels for each language.

Very confusing IMO is the indication of the Style used for the messages. Look at the Correct message, which tells that the ‘Default Success Caption Style would be used for that message. That is NOT true in the default setup of Captivate, the default style used will be the Default Success Shape Style.  Look at the Properties panel, I had the Success message selected on this slide. Reason is that in Preferences, Defaults normally the option to use Captions instead of Shapes for SFH is unchecked. However, this also means that you cannot switch to another shape style in the dialog box shown above. You have to switch to the Object Style Manager if you don’t like the used style for this message. You can find more details about the OSM in previous blog posts.

Second part of the dialog box shows the labels on the buttons of the quiz slides. You may already know that only the old type of buttons can be used (Text, Image or Transparent), not Shape buttons. For those buttons the label has to be entered in the Properties panel, not on the stage by double-clicking the button as is the case for shape buttons. Change the labels here in the Defaults to avoid having to do it on each quizzing slide. Change will not be transferred to the quizzing master slide neither.  Alternative could be to change labels on all the quizzing master slides.  Contrary to the messages, you can use the dropdown lists for the button styles to change the style if wanted.

The progress indicator is also in the dialog box (was on my pleading for translation reasons). It is a weird object, neither caption nor shape, just text. You can edit the style in the Object Style manager however, under Quizzing Objects.

Defaults under Settings

Quiz Results messages

Under Quiz Preferences, Settings more default messages can be found. Let us start with the Quiz Result messages, which will appear in the so-called ‘Review Area’ on the score slide:

In that dialog box you can edit the Pass and Failure messages (which do not appear on the Results master slide!) and eventually indicate which fields you want to show (but that can be done later). The legacy indicator for an email button is not valid anymore since many versions.

Question  Review messages

Under settings you also find the button for the Quiz Review messages which only is activated when Review is allowed.  Except for the Incomplete message, most of the messages will only be used for disabled learners. Since quite a lot of versions no text message appears for other learners, only checkmarks.

The Incomplete message will appear in the Review area (same name as on the score slide)? If you don’t need the Accessibility messages and do force the user to answer each question (see later), it is perfectly possible to make that review area placeholder much smaller on the quizzing master slides. However do not do that for the Review area on  the results master slide, it is needed for the Pass/Fail messages mentioned before.

Submit All

When you activate Submit All functionality, this button gets activated. The label on the Submit All button which replaces the normal Submit button, has been set already under Defaults in Quiz Preferences? But the popup dialog box that appears when that button is clicked has several defaults as well, which appear in this dialog box (I jsut corected Ok to OK).

You’ll see that contrary to the other Defaults, there is no way to set styles here at all . This default dialog popup box will take on the style of the theme. If you dont like that style, go into the Object Style Manager, and find the style ‘Runtime Dialog’. It is listed independently from Standard Objects and Quizzing objects, since it can occur for both normal slides and quizzing slides.

All dialog boxes shown in this part are valid for quiz slides, pool questions and KC slides. They are the same for responsive and non-responsive projects. Screenshots were taken in a responsive project with fluid boxes.

More Preferences

The other preferences can be set up whenever you want although I would personally prefer to activate the Submit All if you want that feature, since it has consequences for the default settings for that option. Similar for the Review functionality if you need the Incomplete message.

Reporting

I will not go into details for all the settings here because it would be almost impossible since a lot has to be tested out with the LMS you are using in your courses. If that LMS accepts only packaging using Reporting (SCO’s) you need to activate Reporting. Only a few LMS’s have a dedicated setting in the LMS dropdown list. Choose the protocol to be used, in many cases that will be SCORM 1.2, AICC is really outdated, and not every LMS supports the more powerful SCORM 2004.

Just a few tips about the marked parts in this screenshot:

Template:  is the SCORM template to be used. With the default template the reporting data are sent after each slide, you can choose to send it only at the end if the course proves to be very slow and many users are taking it on the same network. However that means that when the connection is interrupted, the learner will have to retake the quiz slides.

Slide Views: be careful with using this instead or together with Quiz requirement. I often see problems when clients use a requirement of 100% of slide views.  If you need to use that requirement, set the percentage bit lower at least. Much better is to use at least one scored object at the end slide, that needs to be clicked by the learner and which you can use for a score requirement.

Data to Report: in general most LMS’s prefer percentages, not points. Especially for SCORM 1.2 if the total score is higher than 100points.

Never Send Resume Data: under the Advanced button.  That (negative) option is unchecked by default, which means that bookmarking is turned on. On a second session learner can return to the slide where he left in a previous session. If you check that option, learner will always be returned to the first slide. Setting up the alternative, bookmarking by the TOC (Self-paced learning) makes no sense when using  a LMS.

Other Settings

In a previous article about Embedded objects some of the Settings about activating/deactivating buttons was already indicated Above I already mentioned several options under Quiz Preferences, Settings. In this new screenshot I marked some other choices:µ

Required: in almost all cases it is recommended to keep the default choice which is Optional. If you prefer one of the other choices it can lead to problems, where learners get stuck. There are better ways to achieve ‘Answer all’ or ‘Learner must take the quiz’. Set up the navigation in such a way that the learner cannot skip the quiz (do not use totally free navigation with the scrubbing bar in the playbar, or with the TOC). Once the learner is on the first question, with the default button setup he can only continue when he has answered the question. If you use remediation (go to content slide) you cannot use the more strict options neither.

Interaction ID Prefix: necessary when using same question pool in more courses to be reported to the same LMS.

Review mode navigation buttons: has to be activated if you allow Review (bit lower). If you forget those buttons, learner will be stuck on the first question slide during Review, unless you provide another navigation possibility.

Branch aware: may I point to a recent article where I explore in-depth this functionality which makes the quizzing system variables dynamic?

Show Progress: either Relative (Question x of y), or Absolute (Question x) allows to turn on/off the Progress indicator.

Allow Backward movement: it may seem strange that I allow this, whereas the Back button is unchecked on quiz slides (and playbar is hidden? Reason: if you want remediation, where the learner is sent to a content slide after failing a question, it should be possible to do so if that content slide is before the quiz.

Hide Playbar in Quiz: unless you have “Submit all” activated, you should hide the playbar at least on quizzes (if you have one in the course). Reason: it makes no sense because when going back to a previous quiz slide or content slide by playbar the learner will not be able to change the answer at all which makes it a frustrating experience.

Pass or Fail

Herre a screenshot of that easy dialog box (easy compared with the more complicated previous ones):

The passing score (cpQuizInfoQuizPassPercent or cpQuizInfoQuizPassPoints) can be set. In some cases it will prove necessary to  check if same is used in the Manifest file. Again: prefer percentage to score.

If you have more than one attempt on Quiz level, you should activate the Retake button. It will appear on the socre slide as mentioned in the previous Quizzing post. In that post I also explained that the actions on Passing and Failing (after last attempt) only occur after reaching the last frame of the score slide.

More?

This was a pretty boring article, hope you found some interesting documentation.

I didn’t yet talk about Pretest quizzes here, nor about the quiz slides in a VR project or 360 slides, nor about the KC slides in an interactive video. Articles are already pretty long.  Will be in a later post.

Quizzing master slides have been mentioned several times. There is already one article about their setup for Fluid Boxes.

And some of you will be looking forward to possible ‘tweaks’? I have been creating so many cheating workflows, expect more in the future.

Intro

In the first two articles of this basic course about Quizzing, I explained the Terminology, and the Submit Process.

Those posts applied to all types of questions: scored, random, Knowledge Check, pretest slides. This post will be talking exclusively about scored (graded) quiz slides and random quiz slides which are graded. For those slides the results are stored in the quizzing system variables, and you can have the score slide in your course. You will get some tips about the default score slide at the end. Scoring doesn’t exist for Knowledge check slides, you can only choose attempts on question level, not on quiz level.  Pretest questions have scoring as well, but the values are stored in different system variables, and are only meant to navigate the learner to another slide,  based on the pretest result.

This article will explore the scoring and attempts on two available levels:

• on question level
• on quiz level

Attempts/Scores on Question level

Setup for both is done in the Quiz Properties panel. That panel appears automatically in the newbie UI when you insert a quiz slide (or a random slide) in the right docking station. For quizzes however I strongly recommend to switch to the Expert UI (check the option ‘Enable custom Workspaces….’ under Preferences, General Settings). Set up a workspace where both the Quiz Properties and the Properties panel are visible. Reason is that you need the Properties panel for partial scored MCQ slides with multiple correct answers.

Attempts

In the default setup the number of attempts for graded questions is set to 1. The feedback messages for Correct and Incomplete are checked and 1 Failure message. The actions for Success and Last Attempt are both set to Continue. You could check the option Infinite Attempts, but I strongly doubt you’ll want to have the learner in such an infinite loop.  A limited number of attempts however can be a good choice. If you allow more than one attempt, do not forget to check the ‘Retry message’ because that is not done automatically. Have a look at this screenshot for True/False Question, to the arts marked with a blue rectangle. I set the number of attempts to , and checked Retry. The Failure message was left at its default 1 message.

I kept the default Continue actions as well, but moved the pausing point closer to the end of the question slide (see previous article) to minimize the waiting time after the second step of the Submit process.

Score/penalty for 1 correct answer

Default score for all questions is set to 10 points. Since some LMS’s don’t like to see total scores greater than 100 points, and all questions don’t merit the same score you will certainly want to change those scores. BTW: later on I will offer an exploring post about the wonderful Advanced Interaction panel (F9), unknown to many because it never appears automatically in the newbie UI. It is not only about ‘advanced’ actions at all.

Changing the score happens in the Quiz Properties panel for all question types with a black/white score. B/W score means that you only get the score if everything is correct, score will be zero in all other cases. All question types, except the MCQ with multiple answers are validated with this rule, even Matching, Hotspot and Sequence. In the screenshot above (T/F), you see the score reduced to 4 points.

I also added a penalty: this score will be subtracted from the total score if the answer was wrong after the last attempt. You don’t have to enter a negative number here. Beware: in SCORM 1.2 reporting a negative result at the end will be reset to zero.

MCQ with multiple correct answers and partial scoring

Have a look at this screenshot, set up for such a question slide, with 5 answers. Two out of them are correct, each has a positive score of 5 points. The 3 wrong answers get a penalty of 2 points each. Neither the score nor the penalty can be set up in the Quiz Properties panel, they are dimmed. You have to select each individual answer, and setup score in the Properties panel of that answer (visible in the screenshot as floating panel next to the Quiz Properties):

The 4th answer, wrong answer, is selected in this screenshot. There is no Penalty field in the Properties panel, tab ‘Options’, only ‘points’. Since this needs to be a penalty I entered -2points. Same for the other wrong answers. The correct answers got positive points (5 for each). The dimmed numbers for Score and Penalty on the Quiz Properties panel are calculated by Captivate to 10 points and 6 points. I had to check the ‘Partial correct’ message, was not done automatically although Multiple answers was chosen.

In this example I changed the actions (Success/Last Attempt) to ‘Go to Next Slide’, didn’t move the pausing point of the quiz slide. This is the second possibility to narrow the waiting time after Submitting the result.

You see that 3 attempts are possible for this question (green markings).  But the Retry message is unavailable, dimmed. Reason is that I have chosen to show 3 Failure messages, different one after each attempt. You need to include the warning about clicking the slide (or pressing Y) for the last Failure message which appears after the last attempt.

Quizzing System Variables

These quizzing system variables (see also: Using Quizzing System Variables) are linked to individual question slides:

• cpQuizInfoAnswerChoice: after submitting the answer (see this post for a typical use case)
• cpQuizInfoLastSlidePointScored: after submitting the answer
• cpQuizInfoMaxAttemptsOnCurrentQuestion: while on that slide. Beware: there is no exposed system variable telling which attempt the learner is taking at this moment on question level, only the maximum allowed attempts can be retrieved.
• cpQuizInfoNegativePointsOnCurrentQuestionSlide: maximum penalty for this question slide
• cpQuizInfoPointsPerQuestionSlide: maximum score for this question slide.
• cpQuizInfoQuestionPartialScoringOn: Boolean
• cpQuizInfoQuestionSlideTiming: if you use a time limit on the quiz slide
• cpQuizInfoQuestionSlideType

Attempts/Score on Quiz Level

The number of allowed attempts on (total) quiz level is set up in the Quiz Preferences, Pass or Fail.  Default setup is one attempt. If you allow multiple attempts, don’t forget to check the option to ‘Show Retake Button’. When clicking that button, all questions will be reset and the quiz system variables will be cleared.

If you also allow Review (Quiz Preferences, Settings), you have to be aware of the fact that all attempts on Quiz level will be considered to be exhausted if the learner clicks the Review button (also on the score slide). To prevent confusion use this easy trick: drag the Retake button on top of the Review button on the results master slide (or the score slide). Once the attempts are exhausted the Retake button will disappear and Review button becomes visible. Problem is that this is perfectly possible for a non-responsive (blank) project or a responsive project with Breakpoints. But a normal fluid box doesn’t allow stacking of buttons, unless you define the fluid box as being static. I will post a workaround in my “tweaking posts”, later in the Quiz sequence of posts.

The Total Score on quiz level will be calculated from all the scored objects in the course (see Advanced Interaction panel) and stored in a quizzing system variable cpQuizInfoTotalQuizPoints. Except for the feature ‘Branch aware’ that will be a fixed number when starting the course.  Other quizzing variables  (see post) linked to the quiz level are:

• cpInQuizScope
• cpInReviewMode
• cpInfoPercentage:  appears on the results (score) slide as ‘Accuracy’ ‘percent’
• cpInfoAttempts: appears on the results slide as ‘Attempts’ ‘total-attempts’
• cpQuizInfoPassFail: Boolean
• cpQuizInfoPointsscored: appears on the results slide as ‘You scored’  ‘score’
• cpQuizInfoQuizPassPercent
• cpQuizInfoQuizPassPoints
• cpQuizInfoTotalCorrectAnswers:  appears on the results slide as ‘Correct Questions’ ‘correct-questions’; beware: partially correct questions are seen as correct
• cpQuizInfoTotalProjectPoints: appears on the results slide as ‘Maximum Score’ ‘max-score’
• cpQuizInfoTotalQuestionsPerProject: appears on the results slide as ‘Total questions’ ‘total-questions’
• cpQuizInfoTotalUnansweredQuestions

The Continue button on the Score slide has about the same functionality and importance as the Submit button on quiz slides. That actions specified under Quiz Preferences,  Pass or Fail (after Last attempt on Quiz level) will be done after clicking that button. The pausing point on the score slide is linked with that button. You can move that pausing point the same way as for the quiz slides, closer to the end of the score slide. It is recommended not to have the score slide as last slide in a course, but have at least one more slide. That way you’ll be sure that the results will be transferred to the LMS.