Assessment mode feedback (correct/incorrect)

[Guest]

Hello,

When you record an assessment simulation in Captivate 5, is it possible to customise feedback? Example: In settings I can limit attempts to 'X' times. Imagine I set it to 2 attempts. When the learner fails the first attempt, I would like to include one type of feedback (e.g. 'Remember to do x first' // 'try one more time!', etc). When he fails for the second time, there is another incorrect feedback message. In other words, is it possible to have two negative feedback boxes so that I can arrange them on the timeline as I please?

Thanks in advance for your help.

a novice Captivate user

[Lilybiri]

Hello and welcome to the CP-forum,

Not out of the box, but it is possible if you do not hesitate to play with variables and advanced actions. You will then not use the default message, but show a previously hidden Text Caption, based on checking the number of attempts. You can make as many Text Captions as you wish. Do you want to try that (I'm a bit hesitating, because you told you're a novice at CP)? If yes, I could help you, if you please explain exactly what you want: which message should appear on which condition? I'm a bit puzzled about you mentioning the timeline? Are you talking about the Failure caption that appears when a user answers incorrectly? And it is only an assessment simulation, no question slides? Do you want to show differentiated feedback for every scored object? Those are objects to which points are attached. You can see a nice overview of those scored objects in  Advanced Interactions view (Project menu).

I published several articles about variables and advanced actions, but want to know if you want to go that way.

Lilybiri

[Guest]

Thanks for your quick reply. I'm currently evaluating simulation tools and so I'm trying to see if Captivate would suit our needs.At this stage, I'm checking out how things work rather than being involved in the development of a lesson. In this context, you've answered my question: it is possible to have several 'failure captions', each with a different message.

I really appreciate your offer for learning how to use variables, but I think I won't be needing that information at this stage, I'll re post a question later, if we decide to go for Captivate as a tool.

Thanks again,

Cheers

virgimario

PS. I mentioned the time line (see image) because I thought you could insert a text caption with a feedback message and place it in the timeline where I wanted the feedback to appear (e.g. after first fail attempt), as you'd do in PowerPoint when you custom animations. Obviously, things are a bit more complicated than that!

[Captiv8r]

Welcome to our community

In addition to Lilybiri's excellent advice, please note that if you use a Question slide, this feature is built into the mix. You simply configure the question with up to three different failure levels. When you do this, Captivate keeps track of how many failures have occurred and will present the appropriate caption for you.

Click the image below for larger view.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links Begin learning Captivate 5 moments from now! $29.95 Captivate Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Adobe Certified Captivate Training SorcererStone Blog Captivate eBooks

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

OK, now I see why you mentioned the Timeline. Captivate gives you a lot of control to make interactive SWF's, which is what you do when creating assessment simulations. Those are not animations that just play along a timeline.

Hope you enjoy playing with it

Lilybiri

[techy_kate]

I am bumping this old thread because I want to do exactly the same thing as the original poster, but I want to do it in training mode, not question slides. Basically, I have several click boxes/text entry boxes during practice exercises, and I would like to give the user two attempts. If the user fails on the first attempt, I want to provide a hint. If the user fails again, I want to provide more explicit feedback.

The failure levels for quiz slides would be perfect, but since this isn't a quiz slide, I think I will have to use advanced actions, such as lilybiri suggested. Problem is, even though I've used Captivate for quite some time, I have not yet attempted to use advanced actions, and I'm not sure how to go about it. Would any of you be kind enough to provide some direction?

Thank you so much.

Katie

[Lilybiri]

Hello Katie,

You can have multiple attempts for Text Entry Boxes, Click Boxes that are used in training simulations. The problem is the hint you want to give, because they do not have multiple failure levels and you want the hint to be different after the first attempt.

Since the start of this thread I did setup a blog and have published also a lot of articles about advanced actions. Here is the link to one of the blog posts that has itself a link to a list with articles. Feel free to explore blog + articles:

Articles on Advanced Actions

Lilybiri

[Guest]

Hello,

Great stuff on your blog, Lily, wish I had seen it before! I finally managed to find my way around and the answer on variables was very helpful in my case. Since that post, I've learnt the basics of variables and manage to do it. I'm in a bit of a rush now, but, basically, in your text entry box properties, you need to select 'Execute advance actions', that will open a new window where you can add a new variable (click on the + symbol on the right, name it and double click on the lines to open a drop down menu). There you combine options to produce the desired outcome. You need to think in a sequential and logical manner, as the variable needs to know 'what to do if this condition is given' and how to move on....

I tried uploading a print screen, but quality isnt very good...sorry, do say if you can't find how to do it and I can try to explain step by step.... Good luck!

[techy_kate]

Thank you for the great resources, but I'm still having a difficult time wrapping my head around this. Here are some of my questions:

1) Do I want a standard advanced action or a conditional one?

2) When I view the conditional variables from the drop-down list, none of them seem to be appropriate for the action I'm trying to create. Am I missing one that would work for me? Or do I need to create one? If so, how do I create a variable?

3) I tried doing just a standard advanced action to "show" the failure caption by creating a regular caption (and making it look like a failure caption). I then deselected the "visible" attribute and created the action to "show" it. But then I realized that the problem with that is that I want the failure caption to show up when the user clicks anywhere but the click box (like a regular failure caption) and my understanding is that the advanced action wouldn't be executed unless the user clicks that click box. I think I would come up against the same problem if I used a variable one. Does that make sense?

I know that you are all incredibly busy, so I appreciate any time you can spare to help me out. I'm trying to research this on my own, too, but so far I just haven't been able to figure it out.

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

Think you are messing up terms: variables are containers for values, there are system variable and user variables. In these two blog posts you have an introduction to variables in Captivate 5:

Curious about variables in CP

Unleash the power of variables in CP

I do not know what you mean by conditional variables? Are you talking about the condition itself or about the statements/actions that will have to be executed if the condtion results in a 'Yes' (THEN) or a 'No' (ELSE)?

You need a standard advanced actions if you want to execute multiple actions when this is triggered by an event.

You need a conditional advanced action if you have at least two sequences of actions that have to be executed, depending on the result of one or more decisions. In this article I tried to explain the difference between the two types of advanced actions:

Conclusion based on multiple scores

Lilybiri

[techy_kate]

I'm sorry, but I just don't think any of the information that has been posted is speaking directly to what I need. I must not be clear, so I'm going to try and clarify the situation.

I am creating a tutorial that is mostly demonstration, but it does include some practice portions. In the practice portion, the user is asked to complete a task. I use a click box to validate the user has performed the task correctly. If the user does not click on the click box, the failure caption displays. Right now, using the basic Captivate properties, I can only display one failure caption.

What I would like to do is give the user two chances to click the click box. If the user does not click the click box on the first try, I would like the failure caption to give a hint.

If the user still does not click the correct click box, I would like a second failure caption to give more direct instructions. So basically, I would like to have two failure captions for one click box. The information displayed in the failure caption would depend on the attempt. Attempt 1=hint. Attempt 2=direct instructions.

I have honestly read through every one of the articles that you posted, but I still don't understand what I am supposed to do to get the result that I need.

[Lilybiri]

Hello

I do understand your question very well, but also got (perhaps wrongly) that you are not familiar with variables and advanced actions. It is rather difficult in that case to explain what you need. I give it a try:

• you'll need a user variable that starts at value=0, gets value=1 on the first attempt, value=2 on the second attempt
• you can attach an advanced action to each interactive object: button, click box, Text Entry Box, as well for Success as for Failure; for Success there is no problem, you can have the default action, mostly this will be Go To Next Slide
• for the Failure action however you'll certainly need a conditional action because you have to check the value of the user variable; based on that value you'll show the appropriate Text Caption that is hidden unitl then; you will also have to make sure that after the second attempt, the first Text Caption is hidden again.

Of course the examples I pointed to do not exactly what you want, but there are examples where click boxes are used and where conditional actions are explained in detail. Only differenc is that you'll already have the click boxes in place, not having to add them yourself, while I created everything from scratch. Have a look at this article:

http://kb2.adobe.com/community/publishing/857/cpsid_85716.html

Lilybiri

[techy_kate]

Lilybiri, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your patience with me.

I feel like I am understanding this better, but will it surprise you to know that I'm still confused? I just can't seem to get this to work. So here is what I did:

1) I added the click box, but I removed the attached failure caption.

2) I created two captions (a hint caption and a failure caption). I marked those as not visible and labeled them Hint_25 and Failure_25.

3) Here are the settings for the click box.

4) Then I opened up the Advanced Actions and created this set up.

But when I did a project preview, it didn't work and the click box didn't even advance to the next slide when I selected it. I think the part I am confused with is the IF part. How do I set up the value as 0, 1, and 2? That's the part that hasn't been clear to me as I read and watch the other tutorials.

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

It is almost midnight over here. Tomorrow morning I'll try to create an example of the advanced action and post a screenshot.

Lilybiri

[techy_kate]

Hello there,

I am still trying to figure this out, although I've made some good advances.

I finally figured out how to get the failure caption to display and I understand advanced actions better, but I am still struggling to get the results that I want. So here's how I have this set up now.

And in the Else section, I have it set to Go to the Next Slide.

The problems that I'm running into, though, are these:

1) I'm not sure what to set the Attempts number to. If I set it to 2, then neither failure caption displays until the user has tried twice. If I set it to 1, then the user can't go back and try again. If I set it to infinite, I can't set the advanced action.

2) I was hoping that using the rdcmndGotoFrameandResume expression would help me overcome the Attempts problem by just resetting the page. Is that a possibility and I just did it wrong? Or would that not work?

3) I still can't figure out how to make the first failure caption disappear and have the second failure caption display on the second attempt. Right now, both failure captions are displaying.

Any help would be much appreciated.  Thanks!

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

It has been a hectic week, forgot to create your example, and lost this thread, Sorry!

Could you explain again, in steps what you want to do? Will try to find time, but have still more promises to users that I did not finish yet.

Lilybiri

[techy_kate]

Thanks Lilybiri.

Here's what I'd like to do:

1. User starts a practice session.

2. User does not click the clickbox (but clicks elsewhere on the screen).

3. A hint caption displays and tells the user to try again.

4. User still does not click the clickbox.

5. A second caption with more explicit instructions displays.

6. User should then be able to click the correct box.

A work around that I've found is just having two slides for each step in the practice area (one with a hint and the other with explicit instructions) but this would increase the file size dramatically.

Thanks again! It's much appreciated.

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

Bit later than expected, but this seems to work. On the slide with the click box I created 2 Text Captions labeled TC1 and TC2, both set to invisible (uncheck visibility in the PI) that do contain the first and second Hint. I only kept the default Success caption for the Click box, and it is set to 1 Attempt.

To trace the attempts, create a user variable v_attempts. If the user will never return to the slide, do not care about its initial value. If the user can return (in the same session) to the slide, you will have to initialize it to 0 on entering the slide.

To the Click Box, leave the Success Action to Continue (will then show the Success Caption), but create a conditional advanced action for the Failure; I labeled it CB_check.  This action has 3 decisions, and the sequence is important!

1. Not: checks if the variable is equal to 2 or 'equal and greater than 2', in that case I jumped immediately to the next slide, but perhaps you want something else?
2. Second: checks if the variable is equal to 1 (means second attempt now); see screenshot
3. First: checks if the variable is equal to 0 (first attempt), see screenshot

I never used the ELSE portion, because the three decisions are mutually exclusive and cover all possible situations. If you need to duplicate this action for several Click boxes, be sure to change its label and the ID's of the Text Captions. And in that case you can re-use the variable, on condition that you reset it to 0 on entering each slide where you need the action. In that way, you will not have too much editing to do in the actions.

[techy_kate]

Thank you so much! That is exactly what I needed, but I have another question about it. It works perfectly when I publish it as a swf, but it gets stuck when I publish as an .exe file. We haven't decided yet what kind of output we will do, but it's very possible that we will use the .exe stand alone file. Since this is my first time using advanced actions, I was wondering if they don't work well with .exe or if maybe I did something wrong?

[techy_kate]

Hi,

I am still having the same problem when I publish to exe. Do advanced actions not work well with exe or is there something I need to do differently? It works perfect with swf, but I would love for it to also work when published to an .exe file.  Thanks!

[Lilybiri]

Hello,

I never use EXE, so should find time to try it out. If I need a CP-output that is not deployed on a LMS/server I do use PDF, which works well except for right-click functionality. But as usual, very busy today, cannot promise anything shortly.

Lilybiri