Software simulation example
May 18, 2023 12:00 AM
I was tasked to build a Mail Merge with Excel and Word software simulation course.
This is my first time attempting. I do not see any examples. Has anyone created this type of course?
I search for it, but nothing came up.
Solution
In my opinion, it'd be a difficult tasked unless you have advanced working knowledge of Lectora. A colleague and I have been using Lectora over the past few years to make a few software simulations, and it is quite advanced in nature in terms of incorporating custom JavaScript.
The way I'd start is by....
Do a video of the process itself so that it can be storyboarded.
Go through your storyboard, capturing high quality screenshots where required.
Use advanced form assets where needed.
Without actually building it out, this is all I can give you.
Discussion (4)
In Lectora, the page object captures keystrokes. You can do an On Key action to operate your simulation. Note that you can't have any object other than a page initiate a keystroke action.
In my opinion, it'd be a difficult tasked unless you have advanced working knowledge of Lectora. A colleague and I have been using Lectora over the past few years to make a few software simulations, and it is quite advanced in nature in terms of incorporating custom JavaScript.
The way I'd start is by....
Do a video of the process itself so that it can be storyboarded.
Go through your storyboard, capturing high quality screenshots where required.
Use advanced form assets where needed.
Without actually building it out, this is all I can give you.
I've been building a sim on my Win11 machine, and I use the built-in Snipping tool to grab my screenshots and insert them into Lectora. I had a good walkthrough of the tool I'm simulating with a SME, so that made it easy to write down the steps needed and then go through on my own.
I'm able to replicate tasks like text entry and mouseover highlights, etc. Still struggling with incorporating keystroke actions, though...
Depends on what you mean by "simulation", really. I have done sims that were just screen captures with text fields and invisible buttons overlaid on them, so they could function as if there was an actual program behind them (as long as the student did only certain things). That's very straightforward and would require no scripting.
I've also done a more complex and interactive sim using Flash (yes, it was that long ago) which I scripted in ActionScript. That was a lot of fun.