Best practices for creating Trakstar Learn modules with Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate is a powerful authoring tool for creating interactive learning content. Because Captivate controls many aspects of course behavior, some settings cannot be overridden by Trakstar Learn.

Follow the recommendations below to ensure your Captivate content works as expected after it is uploaded to Trakstar Learn.

Quiz Best Practices

Understand How Scores Are Reported

A Captivate project sends one score to Trakstar Learn.

If a course contains multiple graded items, Learn averages the scores from each quiz or Captivate project to determine whether the learner passes or fails the course. The course passing score is configured within Trakstar Learn.

Keep the following in mind:

• A Captivate project reports only a single overall score.
• Individual question responses are not sent to Trakstar Learn.
• Trainers cannot see which specific questions a learner answered correctly or incorrectly.
• A passing score configured inside Captivate does not determine whether the learner passes the course. Course completion is based on the passing score configured in Trakstar Learn.
• Make sure the course passing score in Trakstar Learn is set to the desired percentage.

Combining Captivate and Trakstar Learn Quizzes

You can use both Captivate quizzes and native Trakstar Learn quizzes within the same course.

Be aware of the following reporting limitations:

• Trakstar Learn supports up to 10 quiz grades per course for Track tab reporting.
• This total includes:
  • Captivate projects that contain quizzes
  • Native Trakstar Learn quizzes
• If the combined total exceeds 10 quizzes, only the first 10 quiz grades appear on the Track tab.
• Complete reporting remains available through Advanced Reports.

Recommendation: Limit a course to 10 total quizzes for the best reporting experience.

Place the Quiz at the End of the Project

When possible, position your graded quiz at the end of the Captivate project.

Doing so helps ensure learners complete all instructional content before the project is considered finished.

If your project contains multiple quizzes, ending the project with one of those quizzes is considered best practice.

Hide the Playbar During Quizzes

Hide the Captivate playbar while learners are taking quizzes.

This prevents learners from skipping quiz questions, which could unintentionally result in failed attempts.

This setting is available in:

• Skin Editor
• Quiz publishing settings

Configure Quiz Questions Correctly

When creating quiz questions in Adobe Captivate, use the following settings.

Mark Questions as Graded

All quiz questions should be configured as Graded.

Although Captivate allows survey questions, learner survey responses are not reported back to Trakstar Learn.

If you need to collect survey responses that trainers can review, create the survey directly in Trakstar Learn from the course's Arrange tab instead.

Disable the Next Button

Clear the Next option for quiz questions.

Leaving the Next button enabled can cause learners to believe they only need to advance to the next question instead of submitting their answer, which may result in incorrect scoring.

Configure Retry Attempts at the Question Level

If learners should receive multiple attempts on a question:

• Configure retry attempts within the individual quiz question settings.
• Do not configure multiple attempts in the publishing settings.

Publishing-level retry settings are not supported for this purpose and may prevent learners from progressing through the quiz correctly.

If multiple attempts are allowed:

• Set a specific number of retries, or
• Allow unlimited retries.

Also enable the Retry Message so learners understand they may attempt the question again. Without this message, learners may think the quiz has stopped responding.

Projects Without Quizzes

If your Captivate project contains only slides, videos, or other instructional content and does not include a quiz, consider removing the playbar.

Removing the playbar helps prevent learners from skipping directly to the end of the project.

If a learner skips to the end without viewing the required content:

• The project may not be marked complete.
• The learner may be unable to continue through the course.
• This can create confusion because course progression appears blocked.

To prevent this:

1. Open the Skin Editor.
2. Remove the playbar.
3. Disable any navigation options that allow learners to bypass required content.

Need Additional Help?

For assistance with Adobe Captivate itself, contact Adobe Support or visit the Adobe Captivate support forums.