Someone recently asked me if it was possible to customize Captivate’s SCORM manifest to reduce the need for manual editing after publishing. In her case, the manifest needed to be edited to include SumTotal TotalLMS’s custom SCORM extensions.  The answer is yes. Here’s how.

Find the Captivate files

Captivate’s publishing files are located at:

C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe Captivate 4TemplatesPublishCode language: CSS (css)

Make your edits

Find the manifest files (manifest.xml for SCORM 1.2 and manifest2004.xml for SCORM 2004), then make your edits.

If you’re adding custom SCORM extensions such as SumTotal’s c2l_cp extensions, don’t forget to include the supporting XSD files. If you’re using SCORM 2004 you can drop the extra XSD file(s) into the “Manifest2004” folder. If you’re publishing to SCORM 1.2, you’ll need to manually add the custom XSD file to your published files.

Rinse, repeat

You’ll need to repeat the process for every computer in your office that has Captivate installed. Otherwise someone on a different computer may inadvertently publish the Captivate project using the factory publishing templates.

What about Articulate?

You can do the same thing with Articulate Presenter. Their publishing templates are located here:

C:Program FilesArticulatePresenterplayersCode language: CSS (css)

Comments

Chad wrote on August 16, 2010 at 12:23 pm:

So, I've had great difficulties getting a CP5 project to commit SCORM data between slides in anything other than IE. The method mentioned at the end of this Adobe Forum post didn't seem to help (even after clearing the cache of the browser): http://forums.adobe.com/message/738193

I am rather familiar with PointeCast and we use the Claroline LMS (mostly due to it being free, and allows us to set prerequisite learning objects). We have never had a problem with SCORM from PointeCast on the Claroline platform, but it has many limitations with animation and video (thus the attraction to Cp5). We do not use quizzing, but rather, simple presentations whose slide-views must be tracked.

The two goals I have with Cp5 are:
1. Get SCORM "lesson_location" and "suspend_data", per slide, to send to the LMS (on any browser).
2. Pull the tracking data in a custom widget to show the user what slides the user already viewed (since Cp5 doesn't update its own "Status" field).

Does anyone else have any suggestions on how to deal with these items? Thanks a ton!

philip wrote on August 16, 2010 at 12:31 pm:

@chad try posting your question on the <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/elearning-technology-and-development" rel="nofollow ugc">eLearning Technology and Development Google Group</a>

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2 Comments

  1. So, I’ve had great difficulties getting a CP5 project to commit SCORM data between slides in anything other than IE. The method mentioned at the end of this Adobe Forum post didn’t seem to help (even after clearing the cache of the browser): http://forums.adobe.com/message/738193

    I am rather familiar with PointeCast and we use the Claroline LMS (mostly due to it being free, and allows us to set prerequisite learning objects). We have never had a problem with SCORM from PointeCast on the Claroline platform, but it has many limitations with animation and video (thus the attraction to Cp5). We do not use quizzing, but rather, simple presentations whose slide-views must be tracked.

    The two goals I have with Cp5 are:
    1. Get SCORM “lesson_location” and “suspend_data”, per slide, to send to the LMS (on any browser).
    2. Pull the tracking data in a custom widget to show the user what slides the user already viewed (since Cp5 doesn’t update its own “Status” field).

    Does anyone else have any suggestions on how to deal with these items? Thanks a ton!

Comments are closed.