Have you tried setting up simulations in captivate on the screen captures in which the users can enter data and select commands to complete transactions?

IMHO you should provide the users options to do wrong things and see the result of it rather than allowing them to do just want you want them to. I would also recommend a more interactive tool like Flash or Flex where you can have some intelligence build into the application which can provide space for the user to do mistakes and learn from them. Particularly in your case where the user is looking at a lot of data the simulation can become very boring and dry after sometime and many of them would know what they have to do to get past the training (where the hotspots are located and such).

My advice would be to go for a more engaging approach which can allow users to do mistakes and rectify them later rather than to completely block them from doing just the right things.

In my experience- make the simulation real- of course, you can't create something as open as all the possibilities of a software program in a simulation (or you're just re-creating the software itself), but you can probably learn from users by apply the 80/20 rule, the important stuff to be covers, common mistakes, misunderstandings, etc...

Completely agree- sims that only tunnel users to correct responses aren't tremendously high value- they need to make and learn from mistakes- esp. in environments where such mistakes have high risk/consequence.

Most sim tools can enable you to splice in branching to make this manageable.

KathyS,

I would agree with Glowman and KP regarding building simulations with Captivate. Make it as real as you can, but don't go overboard. My recommendation is to create a narrated demo using Captivate that points out the main features of the sofware. Do it as a "Show me" type of animation. Once the users complete the "show me" narrative, you should have them do some excercises. Survey the managers and supervisors and find out what some typical actions are the users need to do. Develop simulations around these activities. It is VERY important that you let them fail. Typically learning takes place when users fail to have their expectations met. This causes them to think about what went wrong and why. Do provide feedback on what went wrong and why and then give them the opportunity to do it again. Captivate 3 gives you an easy to use interface to develop branching simulations in this manner.

If you have additional questions or if you would like to chat in more detail - send me a private message so that we can arrange a workable time.

Good luck!

JZ