Easily create SCORM packages with Adobe Captivate

Looking for a way to create SCORM packages? Adobe Captivate makes it easy by selecting a few preferences and publishing settings and allows for simple SCORM activities, including completion status, quiz results and scoring. 

Setting up your SCORM package

Set reporting features

Set up Adobe Captivate to report course status using the Preferences dialog. 

  1. Select Edit, Preferences
  2. Select Reporting under the Quiz category in the list on the left of the dialog box.
  3. Click the Enable Reporting for this Project checkbox
  4. Choose your LMS from the drop list. If it is not on the list, simply choose Other Standard LMSs.

Choose SCORM settings

Establish the SCORM version and the settings. Here are important settings to complete each time.

  1. For Standard, choose either SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004.
  2. Click Configure. This establishes settings specific to the version of SCORM you select. If you chose SCORM 2004, you’ll need to select the edition as well, in most cases it will either be 3rd or 4th Edition.
  3. In the Course box, fill in the Identifier, which becomes the course ID. General practice is never start a course ID with a number.
  4. You should also add a Title and Description. 
  5. (Optional) Select the Keywords checkbox and add appropriate keywords separated by commas if you want the content to be searchable in your LMS.
  6. In the SCO box, add the Identifier, which will become the SCO ID. Most put the letters SCO followed by an underscore and a three or four digit number (e.g. SCO_001).
  7. Add the SCO Title.
  8. Click OK.

Set reporting criteria

You’ll tell Captivate what to track. Track based on simple completion, completion plus quiz results or quiz results. For quiz results, you need to go to Preferences and set pass/fail criteria.

In general, leave the Template as the default setting. The course will continuously report the status to the LMS and ask the LMS for a status report. 

In some cases, this keeps the LMS so busy that course performance suffers and the status is reported incorrectly. Use the SendTrackingDataAtEnd template to resolve.

  1. Select SendTrackingDataAtEnd option from the Template drop list.
  2. Choose the desired Completion Criteria. Most will choose Slide views and/or quiz.
  3. Select Slide Views and set the criteria. Usually, it is 100% slide views but you may have to experiment with the percentage. 
  4. (Optional) Choose Success Criteria. It’s a good practice to include it but not required.
  5. You can also choose to report Interaction Data if there are interactions in the course (usually defined in SCORM a quiz questions).
  6. Generally, leave the Advanced button as is. One exception is if you want to send data to the LMS on every slide. Be careful as this setting conflicts with SendTrackingDataAtEnd.
  7. Click OK.

Test your SCORM package

It’s always a good idea to test your content before uploading it to the LMS. Here’s how you can preview in Captivate using SCORM Cloud. If you plan to create content in other programs, you may want to set up a free SCORM Cloud to test all your content in one place. Learn more about testing your content for free with SCORM Cloud.

Your package is now ready to upload to the LMS. The zip file contains the manifest, all supporting metadata files, and all supporting course files organized into folders where necessary.

Still have questions?

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