Trials and tribulations

My former boss let me know that there were problems with viewing the tutorial now that it's live. When it first went live, I checked it and it loaded properly. Now, however, it launches a new page and the tutorial doesn't load or play. Our distance learning librarian has been tinkering with the code, trying to embed the tutorial into one of our webpages so I'm assuming that is the cause of the difficulty.

I have emailed him so that he's aware of the issue and can hopefully get it resolved and the tutorial loading and playing like it should be. These are the kinds of problems that I didn't think about and anticipate. Very frustrating.

Live!

The first tutorial is now live on the library web site! There's been no promo on it or anything yet, but it's there. The Research Tutorials link on the nav bar has now been changed to go to the new tutorials page, which links to the first one.

I have the slides done for the second tutorial and am now working on creating the quiz questions. Then I still have the narration to do and the accessibility. Still, it's come along quite nicely, I think.

I've asked my chair for feedback on the first tutorial but haven't heard anything yet. Part of me wonders if that's a bad sign...No, I'm sure it's just that she's been busy. I was pleased with how it came out. It's always hard knowing, though, if what you have in your head, that you had planned, translates into what someone else is expecting.

We shall see...

Success!

I believe that I have all of the finishing touches on the first research tutorial! I basically had it finished a day or so ago and had both my husband and son (age 9) go through it to make sure that it made sense, that there were no glaring errors, and that the quiz at the end was appropriate (9-year-old passed it with 80% so I'm feeling pretty good about that!) I made some final tweaks to it today, including attempting to enable the quiz reporting. I currently have results set to be emailed to me but I'm not sure if that feature works until the published tutorial is actually "live" online. Or how quickly those emails are sent.

I have published the tutorial and viewed it, completing the quiz myself, and am waiting to see if I get the promised quiz results. It's not "live" online, though. The publishing is just a step that is taken to create all the necessary files to put online.

I have emailed Paul to see what is needed on his end in order to put this up for live testing on the library web page. We need to create a general tutorials page (I gave him the link I needed that one to be at), which will be linked from the library home page and the completion page of all of the research tutorials. So now I shall await word from him to see what he needs me to give him.

This also coincides with my completing all of the lessons in the Essentials of Adobe Captivate book. This book was invaluable in figuring things out and I'm sure I'll continue to refer to it time and again to refresh myself on how to do things. I'm going to look at my other Captivate book to see if it gives me any insight in having those quiz results emailed, as well.

I can't believe how wonderful it feels to have completed this first module! Hopefully, the others won't be disappointed!

Accessibility

I've been learning about accessiblity this week and how to make my Captivate tutorials Section 508 compliant. I have the tutorial part of the first tutorial essentially completed, although now I need to go back in and add close captioning, even though the audio pretty much matches the text that's on the screen anyway. Still, better safe than sorry. Next, I plan on jumping into the information on adding the quiz/assessment portions of the tutorial. It's shaping up nicely, if coming along slower than I had anticipated for this first one.

Exciting!

I'm so excited! I came up with a unifying "theme" for these tutorials: Info To Go. I wanted something that could go on each initial screen that would tie them together. I think that Info To Go sums up what these are all about: research help that's available when students need it. This will go on the first slide of every tutorial, along with the library logo, and a module title.

This gives an indication of what that initial screen will look like. As you may have noticed, I've altered the order I'll be creating tutorials in once again. I'm going to approach them like a research project and go through and create them in a logical sequence. Therefore, it makes sense that the general introduction to the research process (selecting your keywords, gaining a working knowledge of your topic with reference books, narrowing down, using books, periodicals, and the internet) should come first. A logical second tutorial, then, will be the one on Gale Virtual Reference Library, followed by the Boolean searching one third. I'm much happier with this sequence and approach.

I'm now working through the lesson on creating simulations, which have greater interactivity, rather than mere demonstrations. Suddenly, things are starting to fall into place!

Lesson learned

I can't believe how much more I know and how much more comfortable I am with Captivate after accomplishing just a handful of lessons. While it's possible to cobble something together, I truly believe the finished products will be much more sophisticated and user-friendly after having taken the time to do my research first and actually *learn* about the software rather than just jumping in willy nilly. This is a difficult thing for me to admit, because I'm impatient and typically want to just get on with things, hence my previous approach and unsatisfactory results.

I am thrilled to actually be *learning* the software before I create my first official tutorial. Lesson learned.

Books!

I was thrilled to find my new Adobe Captivate books waiting for me when we got back home this week. I am especially pleased with Essentials of Adobe Captivate 3, which is, in a sense, a student workbook. While we were travelling, I was trying to struggle through creating slides for the first tutorial but was not at all happy with the results. I have since scrapped that initial project and am working through the first, basic lessons in this book first. This is allowing me to get a much better feel for how Captivate works, all it's possibilities, and how to best lay out a project *before* one starts to attempt to record it.

The downside to this is that I had expected to have a completed project done by this time, ready for testing. Although I had completed the project, it was not satisfactory and I was in no way satisfied with it. Since the program itself isn't difficult to operate, I have high hopes that once I have this additional "learning curve" out of the way (I hadn't thought to see if there was anyway to set preferences and I had obviously recorded things at the wrong screen resolution and recording area, which then caused problems in trying to view things.) Obviously, it's best to begin at the beginning and actually get some education on the program before jumping in in order to get the best results, which is what I want.

It's the frustration I was feeling in trying to get things to turn out the way I wanted (and they weren't) that has led to the lack of updates on this blog recently. Things are moving forward nicely again now, albeit in not quite the way I'd anticipated at this juncture, so I'm looking forward to lots more positive updates!