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ADL ADOPTION
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ADL has received a large international following and adoption of SCORM. The most
active international participants include:
- Japan
- Germany
- United Kingdom
- Italy
- Taiwan
- Canada
- Netherlands
- Spain
- Switzerland
- France
Third-party certification is available for Learning Management
Systems (LMSs) and for content. 24 products have successfully completed SCORM 2004:
- Content Packages: 10
- LMSs: 14
For SCORM Version 1.2, there have been a total of 107 products completing certification
(some in more than one category):
- Content Packages: 42
- LMSs: 62
- Meta-data: 25
- SCOs: 31
Technical Guidelines for Digital Learning Content
One of the most active Academic ADL Co-Lab partners is the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB)
with 16 member states.
A committee formed by the SREB created a very useful document. The 20 suggested guidelines identify the minimum
technical requirements for digital learning content. While not directly addressing
instructional quality, they encourage the development of all content to the same
standards, thus enabling selection of content based on quality rather than on accessibility,
technical interoperability, or compatibility with a specific application (such as
a Learning Management System).
The guidelines are part of a continuing effort by SREB and its many contributors
to keep digital learning content timely and useful. Intended users include digital
learning content providers, developers, distributors, procurement officials and
users.
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Newsletter Archive
Current
ADL Newsletter
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Purpose of Newsletter
The purpose of this Newsletter is to continue a dialogue among educators, educational
researchers, and the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) community. The dialog was
started by contacts with educators and educational researchers and by presentations
at various professional meetings. There was a good deal of interest in ADL at these
occasions, so we petitioned the American Educational Research Association (AERA)
to form a Special Interest Group (SIG) to facilitate the dialogue. Our petition
was denied because of concerns that it may overlap with established SIGs. We were
asked to identify common areas of interest with these SIGs.
We have established contact with several AERA SIGs to work out collaborative arrangements.
If we bring 43 new members into an existing SIG, we will be guaranteed one session
at AERA’s annual meeting. We will be urging you to sign up for a SIG, once we have
worked out the arrangements
This first issue of this Newsletter is intended to introduce ADL to educators and
educational researchers who have little familiarity with it. We will list sources
where more detailed information can be obtained, and summarize recent ADL developments.
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Introduction to ADL
ADL is intended to enhance the efficiency of education and training programs by
making instruction, performance aiding, performance support, as well as scheduling,
registration and other administrative materials for instruction available on the
Internet anytime and anywhere to anyone who needs them. It emphasizes the use of
asynchronous, computer-mediated instruction to achieve its objectives. Presently
over 5,000,000 instructional objects have been developed for ADL and more are in
continual preparation.
This Newsletter is intended to engage educators and educational researchers in an
active dialogue with the ADL community so that the instructional objects developed
for ADL can be as useful for education and educational research as they already
are for training. The training community has reacted to ADL with enthusiasm and
over 75 percent of ADL instructional objects are equally applicable to education
and training. In education, the K-12 Cyber Home Learning System in Korea is the
largest user of ADL technologies with 840,000 students, attesting to the importance
of ADL to education.
The ADL initiative was undertaken by the Department of Defense at the request of
the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and in cooperation with
other Federal Agencies. It is being pursued through intense and frequent interactions
among industry, government, and academic participants. ADL has received wide acceptance
and its specifications are now being adopted across Europe, Asia, the Pacific Rim,
and the Americas.
ADL presents both opportunities and challenges for instruction in many settings.
Its anytime, anywhere capabilities can be used in K-16 classrooms, workplaces, conference
rooms, job sites, and homes. The open access provided by ADL outside of schools
will require teachers, administrators, and policy makers, as well as students, to
assume new and unaccustomed roles and responsibilities. These ADL affordances will
also provide new questions to be addressed by educational researchers.
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The ADL Vision
We assume that in the near future much of what is learned will be based on open,
anytime, anywhere access to something approximating the whole of human knowledge.
This access will be achieved through a variety of capabilities, many of which, such
as computer technology, global communications, and the World Wide Web (and its successors),
are already in place.
The development of computer technology makes both educational content and tailored,
tutorial interactions accessible (anytime, anywhere) and affordable. ADL capabilities
help adapt instruction to each learner’s abilities, prior knowledge, interests,
and preferred learning modes. Of course, a good deal of research will be needed
to determine the optimal paths for such adaptations. Education (and training) interactions
may eventually use ADL instructional objects to generate – in real time and on demand
-- tutorial conversations that allow the free flowing mixed initiative interactions
characteristic of true conversation. The common thread of accessibility anytime,
anywhere is obvious in these developments. Like writing and books, the impact of
ADL on the processes and institutions of education and training are likely to be
significant, and worthy of attention .
Personal learning associates may mediate ADL capabilities; these associates will
be wireless, voice-interactive, and also capable of multimedia modes of interaction.
Physically, these devices may be hand-held (possibly combined with the game-playing,
photograph-taking, instant-messaging, video telephones we have today) or even worn
on clothing.
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What is ADL Doing about Its Vision?
If education and training are to tap into the World Wide Web, they will need to
identify and access some sort of instructional objects that are accessible, portable,
durable, and reusable. In other words, it must be possible to find and retrieve
objects that will operate in most computing environments, continue to operate despite
changes (modifications, updates, and revisions) in these environments, and be (re)usable
in many topics. In short, the future of learning may be based to a significant degree
on what has been called an "educational object economy." In such an economy the
focus in devising instructional interactions shifts from developing new objects
to identifying, locating, and assembling existing objects into relevant instructional
material -- as needed by individual students for their own purposes.
Development of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) was based on
these considerations. SCORM defines the interrelationship of instructional objects,
data models, and protocols so that objects may be shared across systems. SCORM does
not specify any particular computing platform, operating system, application language,
or instructional strategy. It relies on virtual interfaces to ensure that whatever
the objects do, they can be incorporated into an ongoing presentation – or tutorial
conversation. SCORM is now stabilized and being used to create education, training,
and performance aiding materials. More than five million objects conforming to SCORM
specifications exist and are now in use. The most recent version of SCORM may be
accessed at www.adlnet.org.
CORDRA (Content Object Repository, Discovery, and Resolution Architecture) is a
related development. It is focused on identifying (“discovering”) and then locating
the precise instructional object(s) needed for an application. CORDRA relies on
metadata to specify and locate objects, but its system of registries will allow
access to any registered, but locally controlled, repository. Its naming conventions
will track objects as they are modified and moved from repository to repository.
The Semantic Web is also included in ADL planning. The Semantic Web is intended
to improve cooperation between computers and human beings by imbuing Web information
with meaning. Through a system of ontologies, it will identify and expose semantic
linkages between quite disparate bodies of information. It will allow more comprehensive
and substantive models of subject matter domains and learners’ levels of mastery
than we now have and combine them with more precise discovery of the instructional
objects needed to produce desired human competencies.
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Instructional Implications of ADL Capabilities
Four implications for instruction, among others, may arise from the ADL teaching-learning
environment:
- Less pre-defined sequencing. Instructional design as a process of pre-specifying
and pre-defining a sequence of activities will need to evolve if the ADL vision
of on-demand, real-time access is to be fully realized. Doing so may be more important
in education where objectives are necessarily more flexible than they are in training
where all students must achieve a threshold of job or task competency.
- More assessment and fewer tests. Assessment will become continuous and unobtrusive
as capabilities evolve for developing a model of the learner from routine interactions.
The development of this type of assessment, and the explicit forms of evaluation
to accompany it, will require integrated contributions from cognitive psychologists,
psychometricians, and instructional designers.
- Fewer ‘lessons.’ The notion of instructional modules will need to evolve to support
instructional interactions much like conversations that can be generated on-demand
and in real-time.
- More reliable outcomes. Instruction will need to become more of an engineering discipline
in which specific outcomes are reliably achieved. This discipline will rely on detailed
knowledge of the learner’s prior and developing knowledge matched with comprehensive
representations of the subject matter and instructional techniques.
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Future Directions for Education and ADL
Many parts of the ADL vision still require extensive research and development. However,
ADL techniques and instructional objects are being increasingly used to provide
instruction, performance aiding, and decision aiding in government and industry,
in addition to its use in K-12 Cyber Home Learning System in Korea. We expect that
the use in Korean schools is only a beginning for ADL’s eventual worldwide utilization
in schools at all levels.
With or without ADL, fully accessible, affordable, anytime, anywhere education and
training seem inevitable. Sooner or later, our instructional institutions must deal
with this evolution and its emerging processes, capabilities, and opportunities.
Involvement and collaboration of professional educators and educational researchers
are needed to help shape ADL development and its integration with K-16 education.
This Newsletter and our affiliation with an existing AERA SIG are some of the ways
of encouraging that development. The goal, of course, is not technology or even
instructional and problem solving functionalities, but the full and universal realization
of each individual’s potential.
If you have suggestions, articles, or resources related to ADL’s objectives please
send these materials, and anything else you would like us to consider publishing
in the Newsletter, to the Editor, so that we
can share your ideas with others who receive this Newsletter.
Robert Wisher, Department of Defense
Dexter Fletcher, Institute for Defense Analysis,
Sigmund Tobias, Teachers College, Columbia University, Newsletter Editor
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Publications Dealing with ADL
The most comprehensive listing of information dealing with ADL is at the website
www.adlnet.org, including the
most recent version of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). Publications
and presentations dealing with ADL are listed on that web site, though they are
not specifically intended for educators and educational researchers. An annotated
listing of the latter sources are given below. Subscribers to this Newsletter are
encouraged to send publications and presentations relevant to ADL, a very brief
description of the materials, and where they may be accessed for listing in this
space.
Fletcher, J. D., & Tobias, S. (2003). Implications of advanced distributed learning
for education (Urban Diversity Series). New York: ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education,
Teachers College, Columbia University. http://iume.tc.columbia.edu/eric_archive/mono/UDS118.pdf
An extended discussion of ADL and its implications for instruction generally, and
learning in education specifically.
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