Better Browsing, Filtering and Bug Fixes

Browsing RJ just got an upgrade!

For the past two months, lesson previews and lesson filtering we not getting along. Both features were causing the other to malfunction. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

We’re working hard to ensure you can connect you with the ideal lesson as quickly as possible. This usually requires one of two pathways:

• Continuing where you left off
• OR
• Finding something new and relevant

Now you can quickly continue where you left off. Introducing the new Dashboard

Your new dashboard shows your  “last viewed” lesson. If part of a course, next and previous lesson links show as well. You can also see view history by date, and completed history. And More.

Now you can efficiently find the right lessons. Introducing improved browsing and lesson tags

Before we bother talking about finding a lesson, are you looking for a guided learning experience or a customized one? 

• If you are looking for guided learning – browse the Course Library. Don’t even bother with lessons until you get bored or stuck. 😉
• For customized learning, you’re gonna need to browse the Lesson Library. Read on!

We’re updating the lesson tags
With working finally filters, we are now going through and making sure everything is properly tagged. We’ve had a difficult time working on our future vision while dealing with a lot of old content that doesn’t fit in anymore. So we are shifting content that doesn’t fit into the new categories into an Archive. We will also have tags there as well, but our goal is to phase this stuff out when the new library is solid.

• The New Lesson Categories
  • Vocabulary: Focus on learning new steps! These lessons provide detailed breakdowns of single partnered moves, jazz steps, footwork, and variations.
    • Moves
    • Jazz Steps
    • Footwork
    • Misc Vocab
  • Skills: Focus on vertical growth! These lessons will change “HOW” you dance, practice, communicate, move, and improvise!
  • Exercises: Focus on repetition and exercise! Here we offer Follow Alongs, Drills, and Practice Constructs for focused training sessions.
    • Follow Alongs
    • Drills
  • Choreography: Focus on performance and execution with high-quality Routine Phrases set to specific music and Generic Phrases that are just cool and phrase nicely.
    • Routine Phrases
    • Generic Phrases

What about the Archive?
The archive will contain all the miscellaneous stuff we’ve made, but it’s not going to overcrowd the new categories and make a mess of our future vision for RJ. We will also have good tagging for this section, but our goal is to phase it out when the new library is solid!

In addition, we have developed a feature to add relevant tags depending on the lesson type you are browsing.

Example: When Browsing Moves, you can sort moves based on “Move Tags”, such as :

• Basic Moves
• Turn for Follower
• Turn For Leader
• Over Rotation
• Flashy etc.

Example 2: When browsing Follow Alongs, you can sort them based on “Follow Along Tags”, such as

• Solo Warm-Ups
• Partnered Warm-Ups
• Strength and Conditioning
• Variation Exploration
• Call and Answer Format
• etc…

Colors are going to represent dance styles moving forward

Until today, we used color-coding to mark the lesson type. Considering that style is the first choice most experienced dancers make when it’s time to learn, we felt it would be best to move our color-coding to mark styles instead. This might take a moment to get used to, but we felt it was the right move. Let us know if you disagree after giving it a few days to settle in.

We want to hear your ideas

Comment below and let us know what you think. We are going to be focusing on developing a good collection of new lessons that fit into our future vision for our Lesson Library. We are getting great feedback and learning more about what you need to learn. Keep it coming! We are excited to dial in our new lesson templates and create kick-awesome tutorials for you to engage and have fun swing dancing.