"Self-paced" doesn't mean "self-taught". Form follows function. We put teaching first and technology second. Remember that eLearning is only self-paced - that doesn't mean self-taught. We see too many companies put what amount to manuals on their intranets and call it training. It's not training; it's online manuals. We teach. Learning is not "downloading into the brain" We measure our training in terms of the strength of its instructional design, support for different cognitive styles, appropriateness of the cognitive load imposed by the training, and ultimately on whether or not people learn. It shocks us when we hear companies say things like "We put all of our documentation up on the intranet. Our training job is done." That's like saying "If we build a library we can close the schools."

Cognimax develops leading-edge eLearning and eReference products. The eLearning products are media-rich and highly interactive: users interact with the product on average 100 times per hour. The eReference products put graphical, fully interactive task simulators only two clicks away.

The products are developed using Macromedia authoring tools and hence can be deployed on most learning management systems, including IBM's LearningSpace, Saba and other open standards-based management systems. It is our experience that most client companies have already approved the Macromedia products we use, Authorware and Flash, for internal use.

In the past few years very unfortunate tradeoffs have been made in order to deliver courseware via the Web: pedagogic value was stripped away so that the eLearning product would run acceptably on company intranets. Nice delivery, but it wasn't training. We took a different direction. We stayed with pedagogically sound, media-rich, highly interactive training, and focused on implementation techniques which allow our products to be "rich and thin". At slightly under 2MB per hour, our products are extremely economical in their use of computing resources. We are proud that we adhered to our principles. Learning comes first. Tools and delivery mechanisms are just a means to that end.

Our products benefit from "economies of location". Cognimax is headquartered Ottawa, Canada. This area has a huge high-tech base, with Nortel Networks, Cisco, JDS Uniphase, Nokia, and many other companies creating a "talent backbone", and a huge customer base which attracts eLearning companies to locate here. Costs in Canada's "Silicon Valley" are approximately one-half what they are in California. Lower salaries, cheaper commercial real estate and weakness of the Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar combine to create these savings compared to California, where most of the largest eLearning firms are located. (An average single family home in Ottawa costs US$119,000 and salaries are commensurate; US$1 = Cdn$1.50)