These are some details about how DSI customers are using our products. Perhaps you have similar tasks in mind? Contact us and we will put you in touch with these users, so you can determine whether our products can help meet your needs. If you are a current product user, we are eager to hear about how you use our products!

We will be expanding this section in the near future to include in-depth stories about how people are using our products, so check back often.

"I have used CourseBuilder over the past few years to create safety-related training materials with much success. Course Builder's built in testing and tracking system allow me to build powerful stand-alone applications with a minimum of effort."

"Discovery Systems, however, has teased me and whet my appetite for the last year and a half, allowing me to participate in testing and offering feedback on their new authoring environment, onViz. Their new product, onViz, is exponentially more powerful than CourseBuilder and will make it easier than ever for users to create compelling software."

"I am in the process of moving from a partnership to a collaborative training group. The new, as yet unnamed, group is a consortium of trainers and artists that will move from Authorware to onViz to support the traditional training and video production work already in progress.
I also intend to use onViz personally to build kiosks for local charities - after I learn how to use it's new features, of course!"
- Chris Bautista, Portland, OR

"I have been using CourseBuilder since version 1 (late 1980's) to create a number of medical education programs using CourseBuilder."

"One simply involved setting up buttons to display video of blood bank testing and/or a text description - and this took essentially NO time to do. On the other hand, I have also created a casebook of clinical cases in Transfusion Medicine, which involves complex answer interpretation -- e.g. giving students 9 possible choices, of which only 5 are correct. This represents a fairly complex programming task for a development environment as visual as CourseBuilder."

"Other projects have included an atlas of photomicrographs, which the learner could choose to view in order of either slide number (as presented in the course laboratory) or by organ system. This same program also included a flash card feature that would display an image at random with the description obscured until a second button press revealed the correct description."

"Probably the most interactive project I've been able to complete with CourseBuilder was to simulate the interpretation of antibody identification panels in a blood bank. This involves highlighting the correct columns from among 12 choices, then highlighting the correct rows from a total of perhaps 25 different choices. Needless to say, determining whether the student has selected the correct choices and giving feedback for both correct and incorrect choices is no small task. But CourseBuilder's Smart Sprites feature made it an easy task."
- Marian Petrides, M.D., Director, Pathology Residency Program, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Madison, MS

"These programs are our tools of choice for producing interactive, tutorial courseware. We have used Discovery Systems International's CourseBuilder to create over 200 instructional modules in basic skills."

"They are titled "The Achievement Prep Series," (www.achievementprep.com) and are used in the United States and Canada. We are presently using the new and powerful onViz program to create a vocabulary series for grades 4 through college. The new features in onViz for sound and image libraries greatly facilitate this endeavor."
- Sterling Davis, Director, Modular Educational Programs Co., Tyner, IN

"I have been using CourseBuilder for many years now and it is still is one of the easiest and user friendliest programs for authoring of Educational multimedia. Its main strength is the ease of use of scoring user input when answering questions and scoring quizzes and tests."

"The new onViz product builds on the strengths of the aging CourseBuilder and provides all the modern bells and whistles, too numerous to mention here. The most valuable new tool for me is its ability to download updated segments of courseware from the Internet or an Intranet. This of course represents the ability of the author to instantly update and expand the learning materials."
- Thomas Maler, Multimedia Software Developer, Toronto, Canada

"I am a Macintosh user, and CourseBuilder allows me both to develop on a Macintosh platform, and to port my applications to Windows without any hassle. Sort of the best of both worlds."

"I do not enjoy writing code or scripting; it is not my job. But I think structure is essential. The DSI approach of a very high-level course map, made of interconnected objects as building blocks, bridging into a variety of other files, the whole recombinable in hierarchies, is ideal for people like me. I just have to worry about the objectives of my application, the kind of interactivity I need, and the type of feedback to fit the purpose, then I build and play with the system like kids do with Lego blocks."

"CourseBuilder (and now onViz) provide me with practically all the functionality I require for most of my applications. Tutorials, knowledge bases, forms, templates, wizards, surveys, exercises, assessments, simulations - all of these are examples of the wide range of products one can successfully build."

"The library approach taken by DSI for CourseBuilder and enhanced in the new onViz allows us to build relatively lean applications, not requiring huge disk space or RAM. This is a valuable benefit when you have to transfer files by e-mail or the Internet."

- Eduardo Casais, Ph. D., Professor at the University of Algarve, Portugal
  Business Consultant. Teaches and consults in project management and marketing for international audiences

"As a consultant to our shelter care and juvenile detention programs, I have had the opportunity to create interactive student orientation programs for our classrooms. Both teachers and students have responded very positively to the programs."

"I am working with our Education Agency and Iowa Department of Human Services to develop interactive computer training for Mandatory Child Abuse Reporting for the state of Iowa. I am also working on developing a reading and writing program for students with reading problems in our shelters and detentions. So I am finding a lot of use for the program. Each day I seem to learn something new about it."

"A few weeks ago I completed an interactive spelling program which includes 1400 words ranging from pre-primer words to very challenging words. It will be used this year in all our classrooms. I am currently working on a reading program to be used with students in shelter and detention classrooms."

"The capability of CourseBuilder to run on both Macintosh and Windows machines is also an outstanding feature. I have found the program to be extremely useful and an essential tool in my job. I have played around with onViz some - haven't really created a project yet. But from what I have done so far, I think it truly builds on the strengths of CourseBuilder, yet at the same time expands the capacities of the program."

"It appears to me that onViz enhances the simplicity of CourseBuilder and also stretches the capacity of CourseBuilder to new dimensions. To put it simply, I love the program!!!"
- Gene Behrens, Consultant, Shelter Care Education Program, Heartland Area Education Agency, Johnston, IA