PfP ADL Cources
PRESIDENT SIGNS NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT – Provision for Advanced Distributed Learning
On 14 October 2008, President Bush signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008. One provision of the new law permits, for the first time, distribution to certain foreign personnel of US education and training materials and information technology designed to enhance interoperability between US armed forces and the military forces of friendly foreign nations.
Internet based education and training and advanced distributed learning are both explicitly made eligible for limited foreign distribution by the legislation. Previously, the distribution of these materials and information technology would have been impermissible under Federal export law; the recently enacted law carves an exemption.
The authorized recipients to whom learning content and information technology may be provided are both military and civilian personnel of a friendly foreign government (with the permission of that government), provided US Secretary of State concurs. Included is electronically distributed learning content for education and training pertaining to recipient military and civilian capabilities for multinational operations
ADL stands for advanced distributed learning. The Initiative began in 1997 with a vision of providing access to the highest-quality learning and performance aiding that can be tailored to individual needs and delivered cost-effectively, anytime and anywhere. ADL is the next step on from distance learning. While traditional distance learning depends on students and teachers being in the right place at the right time, ADL offers learning at any time, and at any location. According to the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, the ADL vision is to: provide access to the highest quality education and training, tailored to individual needs, delivered cost-effectively, anywhere and at any time. Independence from place and time can only be achieved with the use of information and communications technologies and with the internet in particular.
In 1997, the American Department of Defense (DoD) kicked off the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) initiative which aimed at accelerating the adoption of advanced distributed learning technologies. The DoD intended to modernize education and training and to promote cooperation between government, academia and business to develop e-learning standardization. “The ADL initiative has defined high-level requirements for learning content, such as content reusability, accessibility, durability and interoperability to leverage existing practices, promote the use of technology-based learning and provide a sound economic basis for investment”15. The ADL initiative aimed at creating such a web based learning environment in which the learning content is customized to match the trainees’ needs, it would adapt intelligently to the learner and is distributed from a worldwide knowledge database.
In order to integrate and "connect" work from other organizations the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) was developed in the early 1999. “SCORM is a suite of technical standards that enable web-based learning systems to find, import, share, reuse, and export learning content in a standardized way”16. SCORM enables the development of learning content in places different from the place of learning. SCORM assumes the existence of a ‘smart’ Learning Management System (LMS) or often called a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) implying the existence of “a set of services that launches learning content keeps track of learner progress, figures out in what order (sequence) learning objects are to be delivered, and reports student mastery through a learning experience”17.
The world’s first free, open source, SCORM-certified Learning Management System is PfP Learning Management System (LMS) powered by ILIAS..
There are several formats of courses offered by PfP LMS(text, audio, video, HTML, etc.). These courses provide communication among the participants, tutor and administrator, monitoring the learning process, testing and evaluation. Since the use of this model of learning is very simple and free of charge, the opportunity to acquire and improve knowledge should be used as much as possible.
There is a personal working space for each user in ILIAS:
• Subscribed courses and modules
• Subscribed forums and groups
• New email
• Calendar
• Favorite websites
• Personal profile and settings
The ‘Look & Feel’ is modifiable using html and templates.
In the repository users find all available resources for learning and working like learning objects, courses, forums, files or working groups. An internal search engine assists user in finding the specific content, users, or groups.
The flexibility of this allows for a variety of learning scenarios within the same learning environment. Individual learning, where a single user interacts with learning content is easily supported without an online instructor. Group learning, where a group of users (learners and instructors) communicate and access learning content is encouraged with online collaboration tools.
For communication purposes ILIAS offers an internal and external messaging system,discussion forums, and chat areas.
To date more than fifty courses have been developed in PfP LMS and are available to multinational audience. Completed courses in PfP LMS currently include:
Building Defense Institutions
CIMIC Overview for NATO school
Combating Trafficking in Human Beings
Conducting a Computer Assisted Exercise (CAX)
Conflict Management and Negotiation
Critical Infrastructure Awareness
Defense Against Suicide Bombing
Defence against Terrorism - A Challenge for NATO and the Internat...
El Sistema Interamericano (Espanol)
Overview of the Inter-American System (Spanish).
ELTEC
English Skills for Staff Officers II Updated (2 flavours)
Ethnic Conflict and Peace Operations
European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) - Update 2007
FDFA-DDPS International Humanitarian Law Course
All you need to get started is a computer and an internet connection. To view the courses you need to have JAVA plug. For some courses you need Macromedia Flash and the Acrobat Reader to open PDF Files which might be included in the courses. Normally your computer has already the corresponding software and can start immediately, if not you need to download the corresponding browser plug-in or software from the internet.
There are two basic different ways of providing learning content to students on the PfP LMS powered by ILIAS. The “help yourself” approach, where the learning objects are available to everyone, or through an “institutional” approach in which the learning objects are used by education institutions as part of their academic programmes. This institutional approach is increasingly used and calls for a deep revision of the feedback system currently in use but also brings enormous opportunities to improve substantially the cost/effectiveness of the learning objects made available by course providers.
The “help yourself” approach, courses or learning objects are made available to everyone in a public access domain on the Learning Management System. This is the case of the “NATO/Partnership for Peace Courses” category.
This is the appropriate approach to be used by students with personal learning goals and by students who have been advised to take one or more of these courses to complement formal learning programs. They take the courses in a totally self-paced way and no certificate of completion is provided.
Regarding course providers, they post their courses in a domain of this type when the intention is to reach the widest possible audience and tracking individual students’ progress is not important. However, with this approach, content providers cannot measure the success of their courses, since the feedback from students is either poor or non-existent and so is the estimate of the number of students taking their courses.
The institutional approach is the appropriate approach if the learning objects are to be formally included in the academic programs of institutions using the Learning Management System. In this approach, learning objects are made available in dedicated working environments, which are set up for specific education institutions.
Admission to these working environments is restricted to precise groups of students, as defined by each institution.
The degree of tutor involvement depends on the structure and objectives of the course. For example, tutorship may consist of just giving the students access to the working environment, tracking their progress and evaluating their feedback, in a “quasi” self-paced way, or it may also include pacing the students as they take the different chapters of the course, giving assignments and promoting student-to-tutor and student-to-student interaction through threaded discussions. This complements the built-in course tools available to assess the students. Finally, individual feedback reports from students may also be subject to group discussions amongst themselves and with the tutor.
The PfP LMS powered by ILIAS is published under the GNU General Public License (GPL)and can be used without any restrictions. Schools, universities, educational institutions and all interested parties may use the system free of charge and contribute to its further development.
References:
- PfP Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes http://consortium.pims.org
- International Relations and Security Network http://www.isn.ethz.ch/
- Advanced Distributed Learning http://www.adlnet.gov/
- PfP LMS powered by ILIAS http://pfp.ethz.ch/login.php
- NATO School Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) User Manual http://www.natoschool.nato.int/internet_courses/ADL_User_Manual.pdf
- QUICK START INSTRUCTIONS http://www.ndc.nato.int/courses/natofund_howto.html