Microsoft Semblio

Has anyone used the Microsoft Semblio开发者_如何学Go SDK to build a training or education product yet? If so, how was the developer experience and/or the user experience?

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Yes and no. I've used it extensively (I work in L&D) in testing functionally and appropriateness for a corporate learning environment but finally decided against it. Some reasons:

1. The learning curve for average instructional designers was too high. If it was meant for a dedicated half-developer/half-ISD person to somehow work in this SDK and design great e-Learning, the Vision/Scope of Semblio was way off base. It's a good product for developers - it's just that that profile of person is not particularly good at creating e-Learning/CBTs.
2. The Education PG (the group that produces this product) has had quite a few product blotches and non-ships. This one actually made it out the door, but it isn't getting the uptake that EdPG was expecting. It's likely going to be relegated to "well, we tried but nobody wanted it" in the fight between all internal academic-focused groups (Public Sector sales, Partners-in-Learning, EdPG, Unlimited Potential, etc.) - so my guess is that support will fall away.
3. Most important was the decision to use WPF instead of Silverlight. This not a slight against WPF, which is a fine technology, but it tells me two things: This is a Windows-platform play given that education uses Windows/Mac/Linux. WinClient Platform-Adoption products tend to fall away pretty quickly at MSFT (with the exception of Visual Studio/Expressions). 2) There will be deployment concerns of the .Net framework and the Semblio packages. On this point, it makes an assumption that most schools are running semi-sophisticated IT departments that have a good deployment server.

Semblio could have just as easily been created for Silverlight and made into a true Adobe Captivate or Articulate competitor. It could have utilized an organizations existing assets, such as Office, for e-Learning creation.

It was for these reasons I decided against using it.

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I have not used Semblio but i have used another similar product that came from Macromedia and then went to Adobe, Coursebuilder and i have been involved with development an deployment of Moodle, a cross platform VLE (Virtual Learning Environment).

Coursebuilder suffered/suffers from the same problem as Semblio appears to and that is the people who can build the courses from a technical standpoint do not involve themselves directly in course design/teaching design and vice versa.

The technical maix of the two seemed fine but in the end it came down to as Otaku says above "well, we tried but nobody wanted it".

I often feel that when this type of product is designed or mooted that the people backing seem to mistake on-line learning with massively polished 3d whiz bang graphical tools and mistake presentation for substance.

As a counter example Moodle is an FOSS install it yourself tool designed for educators to use. With access to a server on an "amateur" basis a teacher or college lecturer with minimal skills and a couple of night reading can install and configure Moodle and have course up and running for students in a matter of days, or even hours. It can of course look amazingly clunky compared with the likes of CourseBuilder and or Semblio but it get get massive usage and support. Moodle is of course cross platform and will run on relatively low levels of connection and computer spec as all you need to power it (in most cases) is a browser.

As well as that the usage of the tools like Semblio while perfectly capable of producing perfectly good learning material and educational tools often lack the other requisites. How do you deliver the learning? Is it part of a larger course and how do you integrate it? How do you mark it? etc.

I sometimes think that the like of Semblio and CourseBuilder are there to sell the technology, Flash, Silverlight etc as opposed to being a real educational delivery tool. But i apologise if that view seems biased.