In an Interview with Insights Success, Luke Hickey, CEO of dominKnow Learning Systems shares the journey of the organization and its contribution in the education and training sectors. For more than a decade dominKnow has been creating eLearning authoring tools and software for large teams. dominKnow offers a web-based, collaborative authoring and content management solution designed for creating, managing, and delivering high-impact, multi-device learning.
Below are the highlights of the interview between Luke Hickey and Insights Success.
Give a brief overview of your company.
dominKnow Learning Systems is the creator of dominKnow | ONE, a webbased platform for authoring eLearning and all kinds of other learning content.
dominKnow is one of the longest serving providers of authoring tools for eLearning, reaching back to our first commercial product release in 2002. And our company history actually reaches back to our founding in 1997.
We have clients using dominKnow | ONE across the globe, from enterpriselevel organizations with content teams on multiple continents to specialized, custom content teams making some the most innovative eLearning projects imaginable for their own clients.
Tell us about your company’s products and services.
dominKnow | ONE is our flagship product. It’s a web-based authoring platform for creating learning content.
An organization’s authors log in to the ONE site and create eLearning courses as well as a wide range of other webbased learning content like searchable knowledge bases, job aids, infographics and product manuals. And they can re-use content across any of these types of projects, so one authoring effort can help create content for both formal learning as well as informal, on-the-job learning.
dominKnow | ONE has two authoring options. Claro is the “traditional” eLearning option – it’s similar to working in PowerPoint is and is great for making slides-based eLearning courses. Flow is our true responsive option. Responsive design is the basis of pretty much all web sites these days, and Flow helps authors create modern web design content for eLearning courses as well as other learning experiences like infographics or a knowledge base. Both options publish HTML5-based content, so both work on mobile devices as well as laptops and desktop computers.
And in either option you can use our Capture feature to create software lessons to use as Show Me, Try Me or Guided Steps lessons. Everything made in dominKnow | ONE can be published many ways, including SCORM, AICC, and xAPI packages as well as standalone web packages that don’t need to be launched from an LMS. And because dominKnow | ONE is web-based, it offers a lot of content collaboration and content sharing options that a typical desktop tool can’t support. Authors can work together in real time in the same project, and the review process helps you easily get feedback from SMEs at any point in the development process. It really shines as a tool to help teams work together, better – as we like to say.
How services offered by your company are designed to give access to right technology at right time?
One of the core ideas behind dominKnow | ONE is the ability to reuse content, and not just for formal eLearning courses housed in an LMS. We feel it’s critical to make sure learners have access to content whenever they need it, to help them solve problems and complete tasks without having to leave the flow of their work. That’s why dominKnow | ONE doesn’t just focus on SCORM packages alone.
There will always be a need for formal learning delivered by the LMS, but so often companies aren’t able to then leverage their content to help learners as they begin to apply their learning on the job. dominKnow | ONE makes it easy to meet both sets of needs. And we’re strong supporters of the xAPI standard, which provides a great framework or tracking the use and application of content in informal learning, so organizations can get insight and data to help them make better decisions about content creation.
What are the innovative approaches are adapted by the company to improve the quality of solutions?
We use our own products to create all the training content and support material for our product. If you’re looking up information in our product guide – it was made in our tool.
If you’re working through the activities in our training guides – it was made in our tool. If you’re searching for lessons in our community site – it was made in our tool.
We do this to make sure dominKnow | ONE meets the realworld needs of creating learning content. If it doesn’t work for our content team, how can we expect it to work for our customers?
It also helps ensure we keep instructional design at the core of what we do in dominKnow | ONE, helping us proof out new features and options by meeting actual needs on real projects well before we release the features to our clients.
Where does company name see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?
After 21 years in the elearning space and 16 years providing authoring tools, dominKnow has already been in this space for the long run.
We don’t see that changing – we’re still excited by the possibilities technology can bring to the power of learning.
As for what’s in store for our future – well, we can’t give away all the secrets, can we?
About the Leader
I’m not only President and CEO, but also the key founding member of dominKnow. I was there for the first lines of code in our original authoring product, so I know our products’ history intimately. I’m passionate about the possibilities of using technology to help make a difference in how people learn, and I share that passion with everyone at dominKnow.
Both myself and our senior management team maintain close relationships with many people in the eLearning industry, listening and learning as well as sharing. Our senior team works hard to chare what we’ve learned with others in the field, speaking at industry conferences and even hosting our own weekly industry-focused podcast, Instructional Designers in Offices Drinking Coffee. With over 20 years’ experience in the field, we have lots of “war stories” to share!