Courseware that requires custom installation, as opposed to purely online course distribution, presents two problems for prospective students (and their employers). First, the proprietary software needed by the course may be difficult or time consuming to install, and may pose an ongoing maintenance expense. Second, revisions to the course or course engine may not be updated immediately for all users, and may even require additional installation steps.

The Cognitivity e-learning platform, however, is a fully online e-learning environment. There are no CDs to distribute to students or software installations to perform on students' computers. Courses are served from within the student's preferred web browser.

Reusable Learning Objects (typically abbreviated as "RLOs") are small "blocks" of course content that may be used, and reused, in many different courses. Using Reusable Learning Objects, multiple courses can be created using the same "library" of components. This powerful method of course construction can bring great efficiency to large-scale e-learning initiatives, simplifying course creation and maintenance.

The Cognitivity system is one of the most robust on the market in handling of RLOs and RLO based design. RLOs may be edited at any time; those changes will propagate, automatically, to any courses in which the RLO is used. Any objects, (including images, video, audio, linked documents, chapters, sections, subsections, quizzes and exams, individual quiz questions and feedback, or even individual paragraphs or sentences anywhere within the course) may be made into RLOs, not just "chapters" or "sections" of a course.

The Cognitivity platform allows for complete customization of your company's e-learning material. Nearly all e-learning platforms on the market today produce courses in their own specific, proprietary format, with functionality and an overall look-and-feel that cannot be changed.

Using the Cognitivity platform, nearly all aspects of each course's look and feel can be tailored to your business environment. Courses can be branded with your company's logos, colors, and overall navigation. Cognitivity makes it possible for courses produced by multiple vendors to share the same look -- and to change that look whenever needed.

Not only does the Cognitivity e-learning platform allow courses to be customized with your own look and feel, but the same course can be presented with multiple different looks, for different users, all at the same time.

Our e-learning engine allows the navigation, look and feel of a course to be separated from the content of the course, and allows that look to change for different users or in different situations.

For example:

• Individual departments or subsidiaries within a larger company may each wish to have courseware tailored for their particular department.


• A manufacturer or service provider may wish to make online training materials available to thier clients, tailored to the online look of each client.


• A course provider may wish to allow students to choose from among multiple course "looks" in accordance with their own preferences.)


• Course providers can create courseware for clients that is uniquely customized to the specifications of each client, but still sharable among many different clients.

The course in each instance is the same, but the look and feel of the course, as it is presented in different situations, may be quite distinct.

The Cognitivity platform extends the concept of Reusable Learning Objects such that courses may not only be assembled from RLOs, but may be assembled dynamically as the course is presented.

In other words, a course may have content that changes according to the student viewing it. For example:

• Training materials for a particular product may change to present information specific to the particular product model a given user has purchased, thus avoiding the confusion of presenting the user with multiple product options that may or may not apply to their particular product.


• Examples or exercises within a course may change according to the department or to the specific duties of the employee, to better tailor course content to the needs of that specific department or employee.


• A user may "custom-build" a course that meets their particular needs by selecting from a menu of options, taking a pre-assessment exam, or via other criteria: the course will then be assembled into a version "just for them."

Full online assessment capabilities; learners may be presented with study exams, sample questions or scenarios, and a variety of other interactive assessment options. Any number of assessments may appear, anywhere within a course (not just at the end of a chapter, or at the end of the entire course.) Each assessment is separately tracked, and each may or may not be "scored", i.e. count towards a final score on the course.

The presentation, scoring, and other behaviors of each assessment may be customized according to the specific needs of your company. Quizzes, exams, and other assessments are, by default, constructed as HTML forms. There are no needed plug-ins, applets, or other software: any learner with a forms-capable web browser is able to view and complete the assessments. Unlike other solutions, this approach allows for maximum compatability with the largest possible number of web browsers and platforms.

The Cognitivity platform supports a full range of question types that may be inserted into each course, including:

• Multiple Choice (choose one from a list of possible answers)


• Choose All That Apply (choose many from a list of answers)


• True/False or Yes/No


• Fill-in-the-blank


• Presentation of images, video, or audio within a question.


• "Essay" questions to be graded by the course instructors.

The Cognitivity platform also supports the creation of custom question types, according to the needs of a specific company or course.

The entire goal of an e-learning environment is to impart information to learners; critical to the success of that effort is feedback as to how the learner is performing at any given time.

At minimum, a well designed assessment should give feedback to the learner outlining how successful, or not, the learner was in answering the questions presented. Better still is to present feedback that, question-by-question, explains why the answer is what it is, and why the answer chosen by the learner is incorrect.

Using the Cognitivity platform, every assessment, every question within each assessment, and every answer to every question may have associated, customizable feedback to be presented to the user when that assessment is taken, question is answered, or particular answer is selected. In this way, it is possible to specify complex feedback to be presented to the user in a great variety of situations. Custom handlers may also be used to present feedback based on the results of multiple assessments, time needed for completion of the assessment, or other criteria.

The Cognitivity course engine allows interactive tools, such as bulletin boards, chat rooms, question and answer forums, and even third-party audio/video solutions to be placed anywhere within a course.

For example, Q&A forums may be placed at the end of particularly difficult sections of a course, so that learners have the opportunity to ask questions of an expert instructor.

The Cognitivity platform includes sophisticated permissions capabilities, such that communications in a given forum may be limited to only those learners in a given "classroom" or "community", or may be extended to all learners that have or are taking the course, or all learners that have taken any course within a given e-learning environment. The roles and permissions of each course instructor can be similarly restricted, according to the needs of your company.

Cognitivity allows not only sections of a course but any related documents or other resources to be packaged as Reusable Learning Objects, and allows each visit to those resources to be tracked and reported.

For example, an online course detailing how to fill out certain corporate forms or follow certain company policies may link directly to a copy of those forms or policies, such that if those documents are updated, course users will be taken automatically to the updated copies.

A course can also link to other courses that might present more information about a certain topic; the learner could even be automatically enrolled in any of those courses that they wished to visit, or might be able to access them only upon enrolling in some other manner.

Many e-learning applications currently on the market require Javascript, Java, Flash, Shockwave, or other additional or proprietary components in order to complete online assessments, or even to view a course at all. While this is not a problem in many corporate environments, many companies may be concerned about the potential security problems some of these solutions pose, as well as the additional compatibility and maintanance issues that may be presented. Some companies in fact restrict the use of these technologies, meaning that courseware requiring them can simply not be used.

The Cognitivity platform, however, is a strictly web-based solution and does not require any plug-ins, custom applets, or other additional applications. Any user with a standard, reasonably modern web browser should be able to view and complete each course.

If your company wishes to include any of these third-party applets or plug-ins, they can be used -- but only if your company specifically desires them.

In addition to not using proprietary applications, applets, or plug-ins, courses constructed using the Cognitivity platform are, by default, XHTML-compliant, meaning that they use only the features and constructs deemed appropriate by the W3C.

Taking this approach allows for maximum compatibility between all browsers and all computer platforms. Courses built using Cognitivity are designed to run both on Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator, and on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. Unlike many other e-learning products currently on the market, Cognitivity attempts to be compatable with as many potential environments as possible. This ensures courses written on the Cognitivity platform can reach the widest possible audience.

Cognitivity attempts to be compatible with all applicable IMS, AICC, and SCORM e-learning standards and protocols. We actively monitor new versions of each standard, and attempt to support changes to those standards as rapidly as possible. By complying fully with IMS, AICC, and SCORM standards, Cognitivity can interact with other standards-compliant e-learning applications, and courses written on one platform can be distributed on others.

This is critical to any e-learning initiative: your company should not be limited to only courseware provided for one proprietary system, and should be able to migrate e-learning content to whichever product best serves your needs at a given time.

(Note that many of the more advanced Cognitivity features are not yet supported by any of the major e-learning standards, and very few other e-learning vendors have the levels of customizability that Cognitivity provides. Courses that are built to the full capabilities of our system may therefore have reduced features when represented in a given standard, because each course must contain only the features that a given standard expects to see.)

Cognitivity can frequently integrate third-party courseware written in proprietary, non-standard formats. Using custom courseware handlers, it is possible to serve many preexisting courses on the Cognitivity platform without translating or modifying those courses.

Cognitivity can also provide conversion of third-party content to IMS or AICC standards, such that the content can then be served by Cognitivity or any other standards-compliant e-learning platform: contact us for more information.

Many e-learning platforms track only the time a user spent in a course and the final score they achieved. This allows for basic confirmation that a user has taken and passed a course, but gives only the crudest information on that user's actual performance in the course. In order to assist learners having difficulty, or in order to fully audit the performance of a particular user, course instructors and other administrators need to be able to fully review the activities of each learner, in each course, at any time.

The Cognitivity platform provides sophisticated learner tracking capabilities. Every page visited, every assessment taken, and every external resource requested is tracked by the Cognitivity system. Assessment tracking is exceptionally robust: not only is the final score of each assessment tracked, but each question is tracked, individually, such that it is possible to view each user's answers to each question, every time the user takes that assessment.

Furthermore, if a user enrolls in a course more than once (say, for a required annual review), this information is recorded for each enrollment separately. Thus, student activity in a course will never "erase" their previous records, as is the case in some e-learning environments.

The Cognitivity platform allows any portion of a course to be downloaded in HTML or PDF form, to allow learners to read portions (or all) of a course without web connectivity, or to print out portions of a course for use when a computer is not available to them.

The system tracks which users download each portion of a course, and allows couse designers to specify which portions of a course are downloadable, which are not, and what format each downloadable portion is to be provided in.

Using the Cognitivity platform, only authorized users have permission to view training materials. Unlike some other e-learning systems, unauthorized persons can't view those materials even if they know the exact URL.

Users are authorized to view a course only if they are enrolled in that particular course, and the method by which a user is enrolled is customizable for your particular company. Typical scenarios include:

• A user may take a course only after completing an online login or registration process.


• A user must "purchase" the course via credit card before they are given access.


• A user must be a member of a preexisting group, such as a business, in order to be given access to a course.


• A user may only be enrolled in a course by contacting a designated course administrator, who will explicitly register them for that course.

Companies and course providers using the Cognitivity platform have access to a wide range of options when authoring courses. Among the functionality provided by our system:

• True Reusable Learning Object creation & course assembly, including the ability to assemble a course using any combination of pre-made and new content.


• The ability to define custom templates for all aspects of course look & feel, and to change those templates for individual courses or groups of courses.


• Simple quiz and exam creation, including options for randomized question selection and customized feedback.


• Access to the complete capabilities of HTML, or the ability to limit the use of undesired HTML features.


• The ability to include Javascript, Java, Flash, custom applets & extensions anywhere desired.


• The ability to import and export IMS-compatable content manifests.


• The ability to import and export AICC Level 1 course description files.

The Cognitivity platform includes a complete set of advanced administration tools. Among the features provided:

• A "community" based environment, in which users, courses, and other resources can be grouped and administered together. Each community may have independent administrators and instructors.


• Sophisticated community-based permissions that allow for potentially complex, customized permission levels for individual administrators in each community.


• Detailed analysis tools for tracking and reporting student behaviors.


• The ability to customize all reports and tools, and add new ones.


• The ability to download reports for import into Excel or other applications.