An additional thought

Has anyone engaged DRDC - Defence Research and Development Canada?

Some highlights from their strategy:

Mission Critical Outcomes

The Defence S&T Strategy identifies eight strategic mission-critical outcomes that target Canadian Forces and departmental capability objectives where S&T can contribute. These outcomes are derived from departmental objectives enunciated in policy and strategic guidance, albeit refined appropriately to explicitly express the expectations for S&T. These outcomes are expected to be enduring for the shelf-life of this strategy, but must be reviewed periodically to ensure that they remain consistent with defence strategy documents as they evolve.

Outcome relevent to e-learning (my highlights in blue):

6. Sustainability, affordability, supportability of operations, assets and people

Effective operations require reliable equipment and supply techniques to ensure that the right supplies and personnel are delivered to the right place at the right time. The equipment must be robust and the personnel must be prepared for the diverse situations they will encounter. Cost effectiveness is essential to the sustainability of operations and must include cost of ownership optimization through acquisition, deployment and operations. Similarly, personnel must be supported through training, deployment and post-deployment.

Areas of Expertise

The Defence S&T Strategy identifies eleven primary areas of S&T expertise in which critical mass must be maintained in order for the departmental S&T investment to be able to reliably affect the mission-critical outcomes identified in Annex A. As shown in the Figure at right (reproduced from the strategy's main text), these S&T areas group into three domains: physical, information and human. A number of these areas include aspects of more than one domain. In this annex, each of these primary areas of S&T expertise is described further. For each area, a set of S&T challenges is defined that represents what are considered the most important scientific and technical obstacles that must be overcome. These challenges help to further clarify and focus the effort to establish the S&T expertise. These areas of expertise are expected to be enduring for the shelf-life of this strategy, but must be reviewed periodically to ensure that they remain consistent with defence strategy documents, as they evolve.

Area of Expertise relevent to e-learning (my highlights in blue):

Table B-1 Area of Expertise S&T EXPERTISE	S&T CHALLENGE
10. Human Systems Integration	10.1 Human performance models for military simulations 10.2 Human Systems Integration (HSI) 10.3 Monitoring, predicting and enhancing psycho-physiological readiness 10.4 Increased effectiveness and efficiency of the CF HR system 10.5 Distributed, adaptable, and on-demand learning, training and rehearsal

Table B-2 - Description of Areas of S&T Expertise and S&T Challenges
S&T EXPERTISE	S&T CHALLENGE
Human Systems Integration Humans are required to interact with more and more complex systems to communicate, obtain information and effect actions. S&T expertise includes modeling of humans for simulation and system performance evaluation, human-systems integration, monitoring and predicting of psycho-physiological readiness and the design of systems that effectively train and prepare humans for operations.
	10.4 Increased effectiveness and efficiency of the CF HR system Effective recruitment, training and personnel assessment is crucial to support of CF operations. As the CF undergoes transformation, the HR system also needs to transform to support the changes and to provide timely recruitment and training. The challenge is to develop operational concepts, techniques and tools that will lead to a more efficient way of providing HR services to the CF and other DND personnel.
	10.5 Distributed, adaptable, and on-demand learning, training and rehearsal Tactical and operational success demands CF capability of timely, affordable, and effective learning. In particular, full operational control of a transformed and integrated CF charged with an expanded variety of missions will require distributed and adaptable training capabilities. The challenge is to advance technologies and psychological techniques for deployable training and rehearsal that facilitates rapid deployment into a Joint Interoperable Multinational Public environment including interoperability with allies and cultural awareness.

see the attached document for the full strategy.

Peter

Peter,
Ironically, the US military invented the Internet (not Al Gore) and could be considered among the first adopters of elearning. Today, they are among the world's leaders in elearning. Their systems could not function without it. Simulation, electronic games, etc.The comment of the Canadian officer is a sad reflection on the level of preparedness of the Canadian military. Such comments are not just anti-learning, but they also reflect the type of backward thinking that could prove fatal in crisis combat situations. Does the army relegate their incompetent officers to the teaching halls??
Rory

Good day all,

I just wanted to follow up from my esteemed colleague's earlier post yesterday morning on Distributed Learning (DL)/e-Learning in the Canadian Forces (CF). First, I will attempt to clarify a point brought forward, then provide highlights of a few initiatives currently taking place in the CF pertaining to DL/e-Learning. Out of approximately 126 occupations in the CF, we have one specific occupation that serves as a specialist in military training, education and professional development activities, called a Training
Development Officer (http://www.forces.ca/v3/engraph/jobs/jobs.aspx?id=74&bhcp=1). Under this occupation there are only two approved fully sponsored two-year Post Graduate (PG) programmes that allow a member a paid leave of absence to focus on Master's level training. They are, as mentioned by my colleague, Instructional Design or Human Performance Technology, both of which have identifed DL/e-Learning training delivery options. In speaking with the CF's Independent Learning Programme (ILP) Coordinator late yesterday afternoon at Canadian Defence Academy (CDA) in Kingston, she confirmed that they are seeing an increasing number of graduate level DL/e-Learning programmes being supported and anticipate that this will be a continual trend, due to the overall lower costs and increased quality of life for the member remaining close to their families. In addition, it was identified that more occupational sponsored PG programmes are being reviewed for potential completion via DL/e-Learning.


As for e-Learning initiatives, I will first explain that within the CF there are four managing authorities that are responsible for training and education, they include: Canadian Defence Academy (CDA) , Army, Navy and Air Force. In 2001, the Department of National Defence (DND) Military and Civilian Human Resources (HR Civ) jointly sponsored a project to enable virtual learning “anywhere, anytime, just-in-time” within the CF/Department of National Defence (DND).The project has has had some successes across the CF/DND and collected a considerable number of lessons learned. Many of the project objectives are already well underway (as highlighted later in the post), and the management of the remaining objectives are being accomplished through a newly formed Federated Centre of Excellence (FCoE) managed by Canadian Defence Academy (CDA) and DND HR Civ towards a fully integrated life-long learning system within the CF/DND.

Without going into too much detail on each, here are some of the activities and initiatives within the CF/DND that may be of interest to the participants of this Pan-Canadian e-Learning

Research Agenda.

1. Canadian Defence Academy (CDA) (http://www.cda-acd.forces.gc.ca/) which is responsible for training and education of military support occupations that are not environmental specific occupations, launched an interim Learning Management System (LMS) solution in 2006, called DNDLearn (http://www.dndlearn.forces.gc.ca/). As of April 2008, there are over 20,826 active e-Learning users. In April 08 alone, over 450 courses ran and there were over 70 different training establishments/schools designing, developing and delivering training within DNDLearn. Along with this LMS, a number of training and education applications have been, or are being, developed to support our Canadian Forces Individual Training and Education System (CFITES). The point of contact for these initiatives, is Senior Staff Officer, Mr. Bill Railer at CDA Directorate of Learning Innovations (DLI), Learning Concepts and Experimentation (LCE) Cell (railer.wg@forces.gc.ca ). Furthermore, at Royal Military College (RMC) there is a significant amount of design, development and delivery of DL/e-Learning both for undergraduate and graduate programmes, but also for our internal Professional Development Programme (http://www.opme.forces.gc.ca/);

2. Army E-Learning and ALSC - Another initiative the should be highlighted is CF Army e-Learning (http://www.armyelearning.ca/army_portal/main.html) and Army Learning Support Centre (ALSC) (http://www.armyelearning.ca/army_portal/ALSC.html ) [please note as this is a website that is accessible on both the Internet and CF Defence Wide Area Network (DWAN), some links only work on DWAN side]. This team is located out of Gagetown, NB and are working quite closely with external e-Learning agencies within Learn NB (http://www.learnnb.ca/) . An area of work that is gaining significant attention within the CF and externally, is the ALSC. One of the ALSC's projects that is gaining significant attention is their work with simulation and gaming, to find out more on CF Direct Action (CFDA) (http://www.armyelearning.ca/cfda/index.htm). To find out more on these army e-learning initiatives here is a link to seek more information (http://www.armyelearning.ca/army_portal/contact.html).

3. Navy e-Learning Portal - Significant work is being completed by the Navy e-Learning Centre of Excellence, Fleet School Quebec, Quebec City, QC along with the Naval Officer Training Centre (NOTC) in Victoria, BC. They are working to align many of the e-Learning resources so that they are available within one access point (http://www.navy.forces.gc.ca/ecampus/main/main_e.asp?category=6) , hats off to one of the members of this SCoPE conference, (Lt(N)) Guy Boulet working at Laval University and his colleague Petty Officer 1st Class Chris Jalbert for this portal. Another initiative they have been working on is the design and development of Naval Reserve courses into DNDLearn for anytime anywhere training and education;

4. Air Force AFIILE - Air Force has embarked on a large scale Modeling, Simulation & Training (MS&T) initiative which will allow content for training and education to be available as an online, web-based service. This Air Force sponsored project is called Air Force Integrated Information and Learning Environment (AFIILE). Via AFIILE, DND members will have assured and secure access to models, simulations, training documentation and other items of value to their training or technical programs. AFIILE is well into its first phase of the project and we are quite interested to see it develop in the coming years.

To my other colleagues in the CF engaged in DL/E-Learning, if I have not captured your work, by all means jump in and expand or further highlight your initiatives.

Thanks for letting me share,
Jason

Guadalupe, I agree

I participated in an informal study where 1/2 the class discussion was online and 1/2 in class. The students overwhelmingly preferred online because:

1. everyone participated

2. they had an opportunity to think about the discussion before responding so they felt the quality of answers improved.

The instructor agreed that the quality of answers improved online. Unfortunately, we didn't have ethics approval so we were unable to publish our results. We weren't expecting such profound results when we decided to compare the two.