Discover our new cloud-based features, updates, and upgrades!

Did you know the Knowbly™ authoring platform is updated every month? One tremendous benefit of being a cloud-based program is that we upgrade regularly without changing costs for our customers. The following new features, updates, and upgrades are now available to all customers!

Now Available:

Course Comments Log

  • What is it? This dashboard displays all comment threads pertaining to the course, and contains a search function that filters comments by date, user, or thread status.
  • Why you need it: Receiving and reviewing feedback in real-time allows you to work efficiently and collaborate with your colleagues throughout the design process. This feature also streamlines the review process so that all comments are recorded in one place, reviewers can see each other’s feedback, and designers can filter comments based on their preferences.

Progress Blocks

  • What is it? Divide your course into progress milestones, which require learners to complete all content or specific sections of content before moving on.
  • Why you need it: Use this gating mechanism to control learners’ movement through your course. This allows you to establish specific content as mandatory, such as requiring learners to watch a video or scroll through a passage of text. Progress blocks give you the confidence that learners have seen your content and have not just passively scrolled through your course.

Required Structure

  • What is it? This feature gives designers the ability to designate a course module, lesson, activity, or assessment as required. Learners will be unable to proceed without completing this section of the course.
  • Why you need it: This course structure offers designers a stronger and more customizable gate than the progress block. While a progress block restricts navigation until a particular interaction or series of interactions is complete, the required structure gives designers the ability to connect navigation to larger course components such as entire modules and lessons.

Simulate Progress

  • What is it? Take your course on a test run exactly how your learners will encounter it with your progress blocks and required structure in place. If this slows down your review process, this feature may be turned off at any time.
  • Why you need it: Testing your course is a necessary step in the design and review process; however, after numerous trials your progress blocks and required structure can become tedious for you to move through time and time again. Toggle this feature off and on at will, to either encounter your course exactly as your learners will, or to allow yourself to move through the course without restrictions for a faster review.

Placeholder Elements

  • What is it? Placeholder elements appear when videos, audio, images, and widgets are created. These elements contain a simple reminder for you to add your content, but will not appear in courses when exported and will also trigger a warning during publication to omit them if they remain in the course at that time.
  • Why you need it: Nothing’s more embarrassing than forgetting to remove a placeholder from a course. Send your courses to your reviewers and your learners with the confidence that all content they see was placed there intentionally and with no fear that default wording or media will somehow make it through to the final version of your course.

Improvements:

Image Enlarge

  • What is it? By default, learners have the ability to enlarge images within courses and widgets by clicking them. Soon, we will make this feature optional as well as add the ability for learners to zoom in on images.
  • Why you need it: Zooming and enlarging are wonderful features, when the designer and learner want this functionality; however, sometimes this functionality is just not needed. Giving designers the ability to toggle the enlarge and zoom options off and on means designers have the freedom to create truly customizable courses.

Course Publishing Update

  • What is it? In the first of two-course publishing updates, we gave designers the ability to set individual scoring weights for each lesson and activity in a course, and also to set the completion threshold separate from the passing score. In the second update, we’ll introduce version control, course hosting/syncing, and course embeds.
  • Why you need it: Not all courses are structured the same. Some may include traditional assessments and quizzes. Some may not have an assessment at all, with course completion determined by the completion of content or navigation through the course. Having the freedom to determine what triggers your course to complete means your creativity is not restricted by technicalities.

Theme Editor > Elements Tab

  • What is it? All CSS settings for media, tables, attachments, and the new Progress block are all now consolidated into a single space.
  • Why you need it: Fewer clicks within our program and less time spent searching for the content blocks you desire means more time spent doing the tasks you care about. This new streamlined approach will improve your workflow and help you get to all the features you need in less time.

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Are you interested in receiving a demo of Knowbly to see all these updates and improvements in action? Let’s talk!

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