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Learn Adobe Captivate with online courses and programs

Learn how to use Adobe Captivate to make responsive courses in minutes. Explore how to author material across various mediums, from simple text to more advanced virtual reality projects.

What is Adobe Captivate?

Adobe Captivate is an e-learning authoring tool. You can use it to add both interactive and non-interactive objects to your learning material. There are also several options for publishing projects that make it easier to draw in your target audience.Footnote 1

The software's main focus is publishing fully responsive projects in HTML format so that learners can access them from within their browsers, without downloading an application. This way, they can also access the online courses from their mobile devices without sacrificing functionality. The ability to include full keyboard navigability and captions with Captivate means you can create accessible projects for your audience.Footnote 2

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Adobe Captivate course curriculum

As you learn Adobe Captivate, introductory units might focus on the basics, such as how to record video demonstrations and capture quiz responses. Intermediate lessons might delve deeper into how to create different types of projects. The exact curriculum will depend on your goals and the specific offering.Footnote 3

With more advanced instruction, learners can practice coding within Adobe Captivate, exploring how to manipulate objects and use scripts.Footnote 4 The courses may also cover the most recently released features, such as support for virtual reality and 360 degree content.

Explore the range of learning opportunities offered through edX. Accelerated boot camps teach specialized skills in fields like coding, product management, and data analysis, while executive education programs are tailored specifically for busy professionals in higher level positions. You can also choose to build comprehensive knowledge of different subjects by pursuing a bachelor’s degree or (for more advanced learners) a master’s degree. Find the educational format that works best for you and start your learning journey today with edX.

Explore Adobe Captivate jobs

There are many different jobs in which knowledge of Adobe Captivate can be useful, including:

  • Training executive: Onboards new employees and customers with software demonstrations.Footnote 5

  • Instructional curriculum developer: Creates syllabi for e-learning projects.Footnote 6

  • Digital learning content developer: Researches and prepares e-learning course material.Footnote 7

  • Graphic or instructional designer: Creates assets like images, motion graphics, and more for online courses.Footnote 8

  • Software engineer: Develops and maintains in-house LMS (Learning Management System) platforms and HTML content.Footnote 9

  • Program manager: Handles facilitation training and workshops for industry-specific skills.Footnote 10

Each of these positions will have different educational and skills requirements, so it's important that you align your learning with your professional aspirations. For example, a user interface/user experience (UI/UX) design boot camp may be beneficial for someone interested in designing materials, while a professional focused on developing a curriculum may need coursework that focuses more on education. 

How to use Adobe Captivate in your career

Adobe Captivate can be useful in careers that focus on learning and instruction, design, and software development. Professionals whose jobs focus on teaching and instruction can use Adobe Captivate in the workplace for:

  • Product demonstrations

  • Mobile learning content

  • Application simulation

  • Compliance and soft skill training

You can also use Captivate to build courses with source files from pre-existing projects. This feature supports popular e-learning mediums like Powerpoint slides and videos from YouTube. Professionals with programming knowledge can also write their own code to extend the capabilities of the product as needed. This is especially useful for those with proprietary LMS platforms that require specialized functions.

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Adobe Captivate FAQ

Adobe Captivate is not part of Creative Cloud, but it works with several products that are — including Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, and Acrobat. Previously, it was part of the now-discontinued eLearning Suite, alongside products like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, and Audition.

You use it like you would any other digital product: complete your Adobe Captivate download, install and open it, navigate to File, New Project, then work upward from there. Captivate 9 is nearly a decade old and lacks several key features, so you may benefit from using a newer version. You can download an updated Adobe Captivate trial directly from Adobe.

Adobe Captivate Prime was an LMS platform that is now called Learning Manager. It is aimed at those who either don't want to, or can't, build their own LMS but still want the benefits of having one.Footnote 11 In its current form, its key features include unified, personalized and directed learning experiences, gamified progression, and support for integrations via its API.

Adobe Captivate is used primarily for authoring e-learning and instructional material. Besides the applications for education, you can also use it to create online courses to onboard new employees and customers. Exporting and importing items in various formats lets you work on them in greater depth elsewhere, such as PSDs with Photoshop. It also supports integrations with other platforms and services so you can get more use out of it.Footnote 12

Adobe did not sunset Captivate, but it discontinued all perpetual licenses for the product in February 2022.Footnote 13 The e-learning content creation tool is now available only through subscriptions. Anyone that bought a perpetual license before it was discontinued can keep using the product but won't receive any new updates.

Major rich media formats you can incorporate into your Adobe Captivate projects include: image (JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, PSD, ICO, POT, WMF, and EMF), audio (MP3 and WAV), and video (AVI, MOV, FLV with metatags, and SWF). When you're done creating a project, you can export it in a variety of formats, from HTML web pages to executable files.

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