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A RECENT STUDY SHOULD HELP GENERATE NEW IDEAS ON COURSE CONVERSIONS AND MOBILE DEPLOYMENT IN THE DOD LEARNING COMMUNITY.
BY JUDY BROWN & JASON HAAG
The United States Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) plans to "develop and implement a plan to put mobile digital devices in the hands of all soldiers no later than 2013." TRADOC describes the future learning environment as requiring "a significantly expanded and more robust capability to deliver learning content at the point of need. Future dis- tributed learning modules must be up-to- date, engaging and easily accessible." And according to the Army's Learning Concept 2015 (ALC 2015), ubiquitous
Mobile Learning?
mobile technologies have begun to provide a viable solution to many training and learning requirements.
A.D.L. AND MOBILE LEARNING
Mobile technologies significantly decrease the need for a learner to be in a classroom or logged into a learning man- agement system. The Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (A.D.L.) organized its Mobile Learning Team to: (1) investigate the potential uses for mobile technologies and (2) be the source of information and support for all DoD mobile learning initiatives. A.D.L.'s research involves the effective
use of hand-held devices to improve per- sonalized learning: the right learning resources and performance aids, deliv- ered to the right person at the right time and place. Over the past several years, improved software, improved hardware, and chang-
ing habits of mobile device users have con- tinued to increase the opportunities for military training to be tailored to individ- uals at their moment of need. Mobile learning is definitely not just "e-learning lite." Mobile devices can provide an excel- lent solution for many situations.
CONVERTING TO MOBILE
Ideally, learning materials should be cre- ated first with mobile delivery in mind, but this is not always possible. As part of its tasking, the A.D.L. Mobile Learning Team was recently involved in a test proj- ect for converting existing e-learning con- tent, which provided interesting results. The team was asked to convert an existing course on Trafficking in Persons (T.I.P.) created by the DoD Combating Trafficking in Persons Office. The T.I.P. course is mandatory training for all deployed military. First, it conducted a small survey of
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