Oracle UPK - Action Frames

As we saw in Chapter 4, Editing a Topic, it is possible to add Custom Text to the Topic's Bubbles, either in addition to, or instead of, the Template Text. Using the Template Text has several significant advantages, especially when localizing your content (see Chapter 13, Localizing your Content) or providing sound (see Chapter 11, Incorporating Sound into Your Topics). However, the Template Text will only ever be able to describe the mechanics of what the user is doing, it cannot provide business context. You should always try to teach more than just key-strokes and mouse-clicks. Specifically, you should always take the opportunity to add business context yourself, through the liberal use of Custom Text in Action Frames.

Consider the following example that uses solely the default template texts:

Certainly the trainee can carry out the required action and work their way through the exercise, but are they really learning anything? What is the Ext.Ref fi eld, and what is the significance of the value ZBW002342? Should they always enter this value, or are other values possible? Here, we should help the trainee out and teach them something by providing some more information through the use of Custom Text. A better version is shown in the following screenshot:

Now the trainee knows exactly what they are entering in the exercise, and understands the business context so they can perform the action correctly when they are doing their actual job.

Note that here, we have retained the Template Text (we did not insert the Template Text as Custom Text) which will aid in the translation (although the custom text will still need to be manually translated). We simply added the first paragraph that you see in the Bubble above as Custom Text, and positioned it before the Template Text (the Show custom text first button () is selected by default; you can deselect this if required, to have the Template Text displayed first, but for our purposes we want the Custom Text first).

UPK will run the Template Text in the next line immediately after the Custom Text, so you need to insert an extra line break at the end of the Custom Text if you want the two texts to appear as separate paragraphs.

In this example, note that we have continued the scenario that we described in the  Introduction pane through into this exercise, by mentioning the customer's name. Again, it is always useful to use a scenario so that the trainee can better relate the exercise to their actual jobs. Note that the text For this exercise...is ZBW002342 will need to be tagged to appear only in See It! and Try It! modes.

Whenever practical, you should try to provide some more information, whether this is business context, or a continuation of the scenario you are using, even if this is on every Frame. If you intend for your simulations being used outside of a classroom environment, then you should consider providing exactly the same level of information as the instructor would provide in a classroom. Think about what you would say to the trainee, what additional information or guidance you would give them if you sat next to them, talking them through the simulation, and then add that information into the Bubbles as Custom Text. Remember: training is the effective transfer of knowledge, and if that knowledge is incomplete, then the trainees have not been adequately trained.