Hello all

Thanks to those who responded to my email asking for any advice on using Captivate.

I was pointed towards some useful examples:


http://www.gre.ac.uk/offices/ils/ls/guides/edb/howto

http://barrington.cranfield.ac.uk/online-library-induction-the-basics>

http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/guides/information_skills.html (podcasts at the bottom of the page)

http://skills.library.leeds.ac.uk/libraryguide/player.html (under finding and borrowing)


http://accesshe.wikispaces.com/file/view/SWIMS+books+and+journals+GEN.pdf

Also some useful advice:

Keep it short.

Don't get carried away and use too many effects, it gets too busy.

Write a script, don't try to wing it.

Make sure you are in a quiet room where no-one will disturb you.

Put your phone through to someone else - it's really annoying if you are trying to record a narration and the phone suddenly rings Make sure you aren't logged in to your email, or you will record notifications as they pop up.


We've found that keeping the movies short is key, so if there are lots of things you want to cover for a single database, I'd recommend making a suite of movies. For example, we've done ones for basic searching (for

undergraduates) and then advanced searching (for postgraduates) for the same database.

Our students seems to really prefer this approach, and we've also found that our international students (Chinese, Urdu etc) find them much easier to follow because they can see exactly where to click and where to enter text.
And a couple of useful references:


Captivate is pretty easy to pick up, and very quick once you're in the groove. Having to go back and re-edit the movies (for example, if access arrangements change) can be a bit annoying, so I'd recommend keeping any factual information that may be subject to change outside of the movie.

You can add audio tracks to the movies for accessibility as well.


it is important to keep control of the material that you produce. We now put everything in our repository and ask lecturers to link to it there. That way we can update material as necessary. We realised the importance of this when we worked with a psychology lecturer and allowed her to upload the files into her module web. What we didn't know, and only found out about later, was that she had also shared the files with colleagues and they were appearing in module webs all over the place and to which we had no access. The lecturer concerned hadn't realised that what we had done was not set in stone. It hadn't occurred to her that interfaces would change, or systems be upgraded and that in a year's time our little films could be spreading misinformation.


"I posted about this on my blog a few months ago: http://darkarchive.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/creating-a-captivating-online-tutorial/ "


2 helpful references:

Patalong, S. and Llewellyn, O. (2007) Show them how to do it: using Macromedia Captivate to deliver remote demonstrations. Journal of Information literacy 1(1) 31 - 34

Patalong, S. and Llewellyn, O. (2007) Captivate, or liberate? How an initially unsuccessful attempt to engage students' attention aided the reflective process. ALISS Quarterly 2(4) 22-25


I also was offered help by JISC Digital Media who 'can support you on any workflow, tools and e-learning issues you may have with your project.'

Kind regards
Kath Osborn
Librarian
Bamford Library
Harper Adams University College
Newport
Shropshire
TF10 8 NB

01952 815284