Our Seven Favorite New Features in the dominKnow | ONE Summer 2021 Feature Release

One of the things I’m most proud of at dominKnow is how aggressive we are at adding new authoring features and improving existing features.

Our development team has a passion for always advancing and always striving to ensure we can help our client teams create great learning experiences.  

This month we’re rolling out our dominKnow | ONE Summer 2021 (7.4) feature release. There are dozens and dozens of changes overall, but here’s an overview of our seven favorite new features and feature improvements.

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Full-site search for Pages, Questions and Learning Objects

We’ve always helped authors re-use or repurpose pages, questions and Learning Objects (LOs) across multiple projects in dominKnow | ONE.  

Our new search process makes this even easier.

The search option is always available and easy to find as you work.  

The workflow is straightforward. You choose whether to search for Pages, Questions or Learning Objects and type in key search terms. You can also apply filters to limit the search based on system and custom metadata fields. For example, you can choose to search only in Projects created by a specific author or Projects in a specific Collection or Category.  

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From the results list, you can easily preview a page, question or learning object and then insert it into your project.

If you've searched for Learning Objects, you can preview all pages plus test questions, confirm which other projects are sharing/reusing the LO and then reuse or duplicate it into your project.

We’ve also added a new setting, “Is Searchable” that can be applied to a Project to ensure that its content can be searched and re-used by authors who don’t have default editing permission for the Project.

You can learn more about the new content searching features right here in our community site.

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Saving Flow Sections and Claro Layers as Favorites

This new option makes it really easy for authors to create their own personal library of Section or Layer templates, available to add to any Project they are working on.

At any time as you author you can select a Section on a Flow page or a Layer on a Claro page and add it to your own favorites for all your projects or add it as a favorite available to anyone working collaboratively in the current Project. All it takes is two clicks!

Then as they work, the Section or Layer favorites are also only two clicks away – just open the Add to Your Page panel and select the favorited Section or Layer to add it to the current page.

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What’s really cool about this feature is how convenient it is. Instead of having to go to another project to find your favorite Pages to add as new Sections or Layers, your own library is always close at hand.  

You can learn more about saving Flow sections as Favorites right here on our community site. The process is identical for Claro Layers, too.

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Three New Question Types

Three new question types –Scenario, Image Map and Software Simulation – provide new ways to assess your learners and provide practice and review activities.  

All three can be added as scored Test questions or as non-scored Practice questions:

• The Scenario question uses interactions built in our Scenario Builder feature. The Scenario Builder helps authors quickly create question-based branching activities in which the learner “speaks” with a character. An author can set the scenario’s various endpoints to have different scoring values, and these values also  become the learner’s score on a Scenario Question.  
• The Hotspot Image question has a quick and simple workflow for adding hotspots and setting them as correct or as distractors. Authors can set up rectangular, circular or polygonal hotspots. And for each hotspot an author can set item-level feedback for the learner.  
• The Software Simulation question uses software simulations created with our award-winning Capture feature. It means Capture lessons can be used in more ways than ever before in your Projects. A single Capture lesson can be part of the learning process used in Show Me and Try Me modes, provide job aid or step by step help in Guide mode and now can also be used to assess your learner’s understanding in Test mode.  You can check out all of these modes in the sample here.

If you use any of these questions as Practice exercises, you can set the number of attempts (Try Again) and even control access to the navigation Next and Back buttons until the learner is correct or has exhausted the available attempts.

In addition to working with SCORM test scoring and tracking, all of these new questions are fully xAPI-enabled so you can send their tracking data to your Learning Record Store (LRS) for additional reporting whether you use them as a test question or a practice question.  

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Five New Interactive Exercise Activities

Our Summer 2021 feature release includes five new interactive Exercise activities:

• Multiple Pulldowns
• Fill in the Blanks
• Click the Word
• Drag the Word
• Sorting  

These all provide new ways of helping your learners practice new knowledge skills and demonstrate their understanding of key topics.

What’s really exciting about these new activities is the simple workflow for setting them up. Authors are guided step by step through the process, making it easy and quick to add the activities to any page, in either Flow or Claro. Also, just because they are easy and quick to set up, does not mean they lack in flexibility and options. Beyond the wizard you can add in customized feedback and interactions all triggered off the learner’s response to these questions, giving you endless design possibilities.

And of course, when added to Flow pages, these new activities are fully responsive!

We’ve set up a sample where you can see all these new activities in action right here.

And we’ve also updated our existing Multiple Choice and True or False activities with the new set up workflow, making them easier than ever to work with.

Although these activities are only for use as learning activities and can’t be part of a scored SCORM assessment, they are all fully xAPI-enabled so you can send tracking data to your Learning Record Store (LRS) for additional reporting.  

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Inline Help as You Work on Your Page

New to authoring in dominKnow | ONE?  

The dominKnow | ONE Summer 2021 feature release introduces a new Help option for every element on your page making it easy to learn as you work.

Whether you’re in Claro or Flow, when you select an element on a page you now see a set of Element Control options.  

Each of these control options is exciting on its own, but the one I’m most excited about is the last one, the question mark.

When an author selects it, a panel is opened showing the available help articles from our dominKnow Community site as well as a link to search the Community site as a whole.

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When the author selects the help article, it’s opened in a modal window within dominKnow | ONE, with an option to open it in a new browser window or tab.  

If there’s a Help article the author hasn’t viewed, a little marker is added to the question mark icon itself, helping alert the author that there could be new things to learn.  

The new inline help is available on every element you work with on a page which means authors can learn dominKnow | ONE easily as they work, and even get inspired by capabilities they didn’t know existed.

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New Scroll Effects for Elements on a Flow Page

Truly responsive content pages often make scrolling a key part of the navigation and content experience.  

When we introduced Flow, our authoring option for creating truly responsive elearning content, we included a set of animated entrance effects that were triggered as the learner scrolls down the page. The effects are a great way to create a sense of dynamism and visual interest as the learner scrolls.

Our dominKnow | ONE Summer 2021 feature release adds a dozen scrolling-based effects with a greater amount of author control to help create even better learning experiences.

Authors can set the effects as entrance and/or exit effects. They can set a delay on the effect as well as the duration time for the effect. They can also set the effect to be triggered when the element reaches a specific percentage of the page height from the top of the page display.  

You can check out some of these effects in this sample.

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Scenario Builder Custom Characters and Backgrounds and Test Question Use

We added our Scenario Builder feature in our previous feature release, and it’s been a big hit with authors.

The Scenario Builder makes it easy to create branching conversation activities.

There’s no programming and it’s fully responsive so it will work great on any screen.

dominKnow | ONE authors have loved it from the start but have had two big requests: let us add our own characters and backgrounds.

Well, in the dominKnow | ONE Summer 2021 feature release you can do just that.  

We’ve created a downloadable Photoshop file for authors to use when adding their own characters to ensure that the character images work properly within the responsive scenarios as well as a simple upload option for background images.

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Did we mention that we now have a Scenario Question that can be used as a scored Test question or a non-scored Practice Question?

And did we mention that the Scenario Builder is fully xAPI-enabled so you can send tracking data to your Learning Record Store (LRS) for additional reporting?

Wait, there’s more!

If these seven features and feature improvements aren’t enough, well, the dominKnow | ONE 7.4 feature release has a  few more things you might be interested in:

• Content can now be published as CMI5, including to Convey
• New author permissions provide even more control over content access
• Improvements have been made to our Capture feature for software lessons, including the new Test mode
• A new Invalidate Module action makes it easy for authors to create fully SCORM compliant adaptive content

Because dominKnow | ONE is a web-based authoring tool our clients will get all of these new features automatically, with no need to do anything on their part.  

And if you’re not yet a dominKnow | ONE author, why not see what the fuss is all about by signing up for a free trial?

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