Topic: Features

We just wanted to say thanks to those users that signed up and have used Dojo Learning over the last two years. We started this project as first-time collaborators and in many ways it was a success.  We would have loved to continue on, but this business venture has come to its natural end.

We are closing shop May 1, 2010.

Thanks again,

Lux an Les

This is the second article in the series: ABC's of Lesson Development. This article builds on language introduced in Part I.

This workshop process is like a focus group. The best way to discover all the KSJ's is to bring together a group of of SME's, in this case they would be Internet Marketers. If you are developing these materials on your own because you are the SME and you don't know any other experts, you can proceed through this process by yourself.

Step 2. Ask the question "In the course of my everyday work as a Internet Marker I..."

What follows next is a verb and a skill, knowledge or judgement. For example:

In the course of my everyday work as an Internet Marketer I...:

Typically this process is completed over two days with groups of 8 - 10 experts and the list of KSJ's can exceed 100. This list is usually displayed on cards along a wall, but it can be expressed on paper just as well. If you are trying to develop more concise materials you can keep this list short or break a longer list into a multiple set of materials.

Step 3: Group the KSJ's in categories. 

You can categorize these skills as "Communication." I've included an example of a DACUM chart that demonstrates how you can group your list of KSJs. This chart represents an entry level Art Advertising course that is delivered by a local college. Now you can make your own DACUM chart. A smaller version of the DACUM chart can be viewed below as well.

 

Step 4. Assign a Competence Level to Each KSJ (Optional)

This helps you gauge how in-depth you may want to teach certain KSJ's. For example in the skill above "record video"  you may not want to teach that as in depth as "tweet messages."  If that is the case, I would assign a "2" to record video and a "3" to "Tweet Messages." This process really helps you focus your materials development to those skills that are most important and require more content than the less important skills.

This DACUM process is the standard for developing curriculum, and if you are a knowledge-based consultant or independent trainer this process is a great way to organize your training.  In the next post we will explore how we can take the DACUM chart and create lessons in Dojo Learning. The ABC's of Lesson Development is a series on outcomes-bases lesson development and assessment. If you are interested in this series subscribe to our RSS feed and follow along.

I've spent the last 6 years working with curriculum development in an Adult Learning organization. We used a curriculum development process that makes delivering training thorough and practical. Having a clear structure helps clients see what they are learning and provides them confidence with the materials you have developed.

This process is called Outcome-based Learning.  An outcome is a conceptual container that holds all the knowledge, skills and judgements  you need to accomplish the outcome. At the onset of each lesson the developer should complete the following sentence:

"At the end of this lesson my learners will be able to..."

and what follows next is an action word, or verb, and the outcome.

Let's use the example of cleaning a kitchen in this sentence. At the end of this lesson, my learner will be able to Clean the Kitchen.

The learning outcome, Clean the Kitchen holds all the knowledge, skills and judgements (KSJ's) required to perform the outcome. Here is a list of KSJ's for the Clean the Kitchen outcome.

Knowledge
Safely use cleaning chemicals.
Prepare cleaning solutions using ratios.
Understand the appropriate tools for the appropriate job task. 

Skills
Sweep floors.
Wash dishes.
Wash floors.
Clean counters.

Judgements
Choose appropriate cleaning supplies for the job.
Choose appropriate cleaning tools for the job.
Assess when kitchen is clean.

These KSJ's are what you teach your clients if they are taking your How to Clean the Kitchen lesson. This framework provides the lesson developer with a road map for lesson development and a clear framework for you clients. This method is considered a best-practice in curriculum development and private trainers and consultants can use this method for developing their own materials too.

The next article in this series is on DACUM (Developing A CUrriculuM) which is a storyboard / workshop method that helps you develop KSJ's for your training. The ABC's of Lesson Development is a series on outcomes-bases lesson development and assessment. If you are interested in this series subscribe to our RSS feed and follow along.

We should be out enjoying the nice weather today (it may be one of our last up here in Winnipeg!) but instead we spent today doing a bunch of bug fixing. These include several improvements for instructors, people management, messaging pending users, a fix for Firefox 2 users in the lounge, and some minor UI tweaks too.

Now to enjoy the remaining sunshine! :)

We've been hard at work this summer and have just launched a major update to Dojo Learning.  Take a look!

New features:

Developer API
This allows other developers to make use of our online learning application in unique and custom ways.  The API has many functions that can be used in almost unlimited ways to customize your Dojo Learning experience.

Facebook Application
We have added a Facebook application that allows you to share which lessons you are taking and which ones you are instructing and connect with other Dojo Learning users on Facebook.  Great if you are selling your training or using Facebook in your online classroom.

Profile Pages
Upload your photo and connect with other learners using your profile page.  Learners are automatically connected to each other when they subscribe or when they are invited into a lesson.

Widget Tool
We have developed a Widget tool that let you embed your lessons into your own blog or website. You can use the Widget to promote your lessons while keeping your already branded webpage.

Promote Your Lesson
Use your address book from Gmail, Outlook, Plaxo, AOL, Yahoo! or use a CSV file to promote your lesson to all your contacts or submit your lesson to over 20 social media sites.

Updates:

Journal
The Journal tool has been improved.  Navigation is easier, responses are easier to read and profile pictures are connected to each response.

Improved Landing Page
When logging on to Dojo Learning, you are presented with a new, more informative landing page that quickly directs you to the lessons you're taking or instructing, and provides you with a quick link to add a new lesson to your account.

Chat Tool
The chat tool was taking too much screen real estate, so we tucked it away in a side tab.  When a fellow learner or instructor starts a chat, an indicator will let you know that a chat has started.  You can disable the indicator tool if you want to work in private.

We are very exited about these changes and are already working on Dojo Learning version 2.0.  We will strive to make Dojo Learning the most engaging learning application on the net.  Enjoy the upgrade.

I was playing with the recently announced Ubiquity Firefox extension from Mozilla Labs today and came up with a little Ubiquity command for Dojo users.

Ubiquity extends Firefox to enable end users to create their own ad hoc mashups of the various web services (Google, Wikipedia, Amazon, you name it) in cool new ways, without needing to know about the underlying technical details.

An example from their demo connects a restaurant with a map to get there and a customer review, then emails it all to a friend to make dinner plans. Needless to say, this is an awesome new development in web browsers that really puts more power into the hands of the everyday web user.

Back to Dojo, if you install the Ubiquity extension then browse to this page here, it will prompt you to install the Dojo Learning command, which provides search results of our lessons for use in your Ubiquity mashups. And here's a screenshot of what it looks like in action:



Enjoy!

We had our first Dojo Learning outage today. It was an Apache server error and we just fixed it. Dojo Learning is up and running and we are looking further into this error in order to resolve future outages.

Dojo Learning

We just finished launching our new Widget Builder, which displays your lessons on your blog or website. You'll find this under the Tools link in the footer of the site. You can customize the widget title text, how many lessons to show, and whether to include the lesson prices.

We also finished building a start page widget that works on iGoogle, Netvibes and several other start page services. This widget displays the lessons you're taking and instructing, and a feed of your latest Journal entries all available directly from your start page.

And lastly, if you'd like to show your support, we created several Dojo Learning badges which you can place on your website or blog. This is all on our new Tools page.

Make sure you subscribe to our blog feed to stay up on all the new tools and features we've got in the pipeline!

Now that we've finished the new How to Use Dojo Learning lesson, which all new users are automatically signed up for to help you get off on the right foot, we realized using that lesson's learner lounge would be perfect for creating discussion amongst Dojo users. And so the new Dojo forum was born, where you can share tips and ideas, help each other out, and make feature suggestions. We hope this becomes a great resource for our users.

We've also just introduced a small but really cool new feature, which is that instructors can now see a pie chart breakdown of learner input to any multiple choice question. What's cool about this is that in addition to being able to see trends in learner input, you could also use this to create mini-surveys inside your Dojo lessons, like a comment card at the end of the lesson. Here's a screenshot of the new feature in action:



As always, we'd love to know what you think of these new features, so hit us up in the new lounge in the How to Use Dojo Learning lesson or leave us a comment on this post!

Assessment is the process of investigating a learner’s work for evidence of understanding and competence.  Typically, we learn content and then we are assessed through a test at the end of the process.  But that’s not natural, assessment happens throughout the process of learning.

Let’s take the case of self-assessment.  When we teach ourselves a skill or new knowledge we are constantly asking ourselves “did I get that?”  We usually don’t move forward in our studies until we do.  We are self-assessing and it occurs constantly. I call this natural assessment and why should it be any different online or in a classroom?

Building learning materials and assessments to mimic natural assessment will create stronger knowledge foundations because learners will have their trouble areas flagged before moving onto new material.

The Dojo Learning course builder is structured in a way that creating natural assessment is encouraged.  At anytime in the process a journal object (those are our assessment objects) can be added.  This means that as an instructor you can see the progress of your learners and their level of competences within a unit rather than at the end of a unit.

This information is vital to understand your employee’s or client’s strengths and weaknesses and helps gauge if further training is required in your organization.

This is the second of a series of posts we'll be making about workplace learning and the ideas that went into making Dojo Learning for work. Make sure to subscribe through email or RSS to catch future posts.