DOT-ed

Taught by Humans' lifelong learning platform.

Everyone can learn what they need to in a way which works for them.

Lifelong Learning -What, Like, It's Hard?*

*Yes, this is a Legally Blonde quote. Yes, our founder Laura did use this in her PhD thesis.

We have spent many years educating 100s of people in a range of topics - including spreadsheets, Python, presentation skills, websites. We've noticed educating adults is, well, hard. People have different knowledge, experience, goals, time constraints, and access (to name a few things).

When we put on a beginner or advanced class, it's quite difficult to find a level which works for everyone. This means some of the class are lost at certain bits, and others are bored of learning something for the third time. Unless you started learning with a specific course as a beginner, it is unlikely you have covered everything needed for their more advanced courses. But also, beginners don't all come from the same place - take for example, four people wanting to learn Google Sheets. One has just started a new job, in their previous job they used Microsoft Excel but has never opened Google Sheets. Another is a recent graduate who has never used a spreadsheet. The next can use Google Sheets comfortably - typing in data, copying and pasting, some formatting - but has never written a formula. The final hasn't used Google Sheets or other spreadsheets very much, but has used SQL and Python often in previous roles as a Data Scientist. Technically all beginners, but they all need very different learning journeys.

Am I a Beginner? I don't think I'm advanced...

The internet is amazing. The amount of courses and learning available online is amazing. However, the sheer amount has lead to information overload. Our founder Laura researched how people learn data and AI skills as part of her PhD, and many people explained to her how overwhelmed they felt when trying to learn something new. People were often so bombarded with choice they decided against learning, or tried a few unsuitable options and felt disheartened and gave up.

Too Much Choice

Video. Blog. Longer course. Virtual reality?

Introducing DOT-ed

We've spoken to a lot of people about learning, and what we keep discovering is the many, many ways people learn. Some people love to learn through official courses, some through trying and breaking things, others prefer short videos. Also, everyone doesn't want the same format of learning all the time. Our founder Laura likes a mix of blogs and real world application when learning something technical, but prefers podcasts for more theoretical topics (or when she is on the move).

Throughout our school and university education, unfortunately we are very much learning to pass exams and get good grades. As adults, there are many reasons why we are learning something. We could be learning at the point of pain - meaning we need to do the thing now (often people give the example of VLOOKUPs in spreadsheets when we chat about this). In this situation, we don't want to watch a 30 minute video, we need the knowledge right now. Other times we are learning to become an expert in a topic, and a longer course with some applications might be better suited. Or we could be learning to be recognised or get a promotion, in this case a certification or something we can use to prove our skills is needed. As well as these goals impacting how we learn something, they also have an impact on the content we want to learn. Our human JJ has been learning Spanish on Duolingo. He wants to be able to speak Spanish when he is in Spain or another Spainish speaking country. He loves Duolingo, the gamification element especially the leaderboard keeps him engaged in learning. But he spent over a week learning words to do with school ("parablas sobre la escuela"), which frustrated him as he will not be speaking to a waiter about his pencilcase ("su estuche de lápices"). If he could have told Duolingo his goals, perhaps the content could have been better tailored to JJ's learning needs.

Why do you want to learn that?

How we envision our learning journeys - many dots (or options for learning) which can be connected in a number of ways to help our learners reach their goals

With an aim of addressing some of these complexities with adult and lifelong learning, we have decided to build a platform which aims to personalise learning journeys for our learners. As all adults are unique, their learning also needs to be unique. The idea is illustrated in the diagram above - there is more then one route to the same end goal, even starting at different points.

Because everyone loves an acronym, we've named our platform DOT-ed:

Dynamic

Online

Tailored

education

We Need Your Help

While we want to help everyone learn everything, we think it's important to start small and do something well. So, we are starting with AI & data (as we're quite into those topics). Here's where we need your help:

If you are business, organisation or department who wants to upskill your staff in AI & data topics, and could be interested in a trial with our platform, we would love to hear from you.
If you want to learn more about these topics (particularly if you are interested in learning SQL), we are keen to have some testers who will get free access to our platform and content.
If you think we could partner or work together (eg you have content or a group of learners in another environment), we're always keen to chat.

Many thanks,

The Humans at Taught by Humans