Variables in dominKnow | ONE: A primer

A variable is some information that gets stored so you can use it.

That's pretty helpful, right?

Maybe it's more helpful to understand what you can use variables for, in order to understand what a variable is.

Variables can help you take care of all sorts of things in a project. You can use them to:

• Store and show a score for a game
• Store and show a learner’s name throughout a project
• Store information on what selections a learner made on pages 2, 3 and 4 so you can customize what you show them on page 5.
• And a lot more

In dominKnow | ONE, we have two types of variables available:

• System Variables – data and information generated by the Project and the learner
• Custom Variables – additional or custom data that YOU want to track

As you create a Project, you’re adding in all kinds of information. Things like the Project’s name, the names of Pages it contains, or what the passing score is for a test. These are stored as what we call System Variables.

You can also add information that becomes available as a System Variable, like copyright and disclaimer statements in the Project Metadata.

And you can take advantage of the System Variable information in your Projects.

For example, you can display System Variables as text on your pages or you can evaluate many of them to trigger different options as a learner works through a project.

Here’s a simple example: Instead of typing the project’s name into a text element on a title page you can simply set the text element to display the system variable for the name of the Project.

Why would you do this?

One reason is to simplify updates. If you change the Project title then the text element using the system variable on the Title Page will automatically be updated. If you were just typing text into the element, you would need to remember to edit the title page as a second step.

It’s also a great strategy to make it simpler to re-use a Title Page as a template. When the Title Page is used in a new project the text element will show the system variable for the new Project’s name which means the title in the text element will always be accurate and you don’t need to remember to edit the element on the page.

Here’s how to set a text element to display a System Variable:

There are more than 50 different System Variables that you can access.

Placeholders in some blank pages and Sections (in Flow) have icons to help you quickly choose to display the Course, Module, LO or Page title variables:

You can also create Custom Variables to store any data you want to use elsewhere in a Project, for example for the score in a game or to store what a learner types into a text type-in field.

There are three types of Custom Variables:

• Number
• Text String
• Boolean

Basically, each defines the type of data the variable will store. Numbers and text strings are pretty easy to understand. A Boolean variable is a true or false value.

Some details about Custom Variables in dominKnow | ONE:

• You create a Custom Variable as part of setting up the first action that will set the variable’s value. (In some tools you create the variable first then create the actions that set or alter its value.)
• You can give a Custom Variable any name that makes sense.
• When a learner interacts with something that sets a value for a Custom Variable, that value is available throughout the project. You can have the learner type something on page 1 and show it back to them on page 24, for example.

Some features in dominKnow | ONE are ideally set up to store data to a variable. These include:

• The Toggles, Input fields, Menus, Radio Buttons and Sliders available from the Inputs option on the Insert tab
• The Inline Questions and Tile Cards available on the Engage tab

For these items, the Options tab has a Variables button to let you set a Custom Variable to store the data for the trigger event:

And some features are set up to display the value of a variable, such as the Gauges available on the Insert tab.

You can also use events like a click on a Button to set a Custom Variable’s value by using the Actions feature on the Insert tab:

And the Triggers option has a section that lets you evaluate a Custom Variable as a way of triggering an action:

The sky is pretty much the limit, really.

Custom variables can really take your authoring in almost any direction. They really add a level of programming-like control to your authoring skills.