U.S. Army moving to distance learning

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army is reworking its training system to utilize distance learning to help keep units together longer, standardize lessons learned by active-duty and reserve soldiers and reduce spending.

Col. Sharon Holmes, project manager for the Army's Distance Learning Program, outlined the plan's audacious goals Tuesday during an e-learning conference here.

For the past few decades, the service has focused on providing advanced training at specific schools. While effective, this approach required soldiers to spend up to several weeks away from their units, draining funds for travel and sometimes causing operational problems.

Holmes said the current environment of multiple overseas deployments, which is expected to continue into the foreseeable future, renders the school-based paradigm impractical and prevents soldiers from getting needed training.

The Army's solution for this situation, she said, lies in distance learning, where the trainer and student are separated by distance or time. The service is in the midst of overhauling its training methods to rely heavily on courses taught through two-way video links and CD-based software, she said.

There are currently more than 150 DLP locations in the continental United States, and about a dozen overseas centers, Holmes said. Fully implementing DLP will provide identical training standards for active-duty, National Guard and reserve troops, she said, and will help the Army reach its objective of being able to deploy a 5,000-solider unit in less than four days.

"It's a win-win situation for the Army," Holmes said. "It allows ... better retention of soldiers by bringing training to the soldier, as well as allowing a commander to increase the (operational) readiness of his or her soldiers. Soldiers win because they can access civilian classes and stay closer to their families."

Holmes' office in Newport News, Va., is evaluating cutting-edge computer network tools for improving the program's quality of training, she said. The overall network, which includes elements of the public Internet and military-only systems, includes several layers of security to protect the integrity of the training, she said.

A separate unit at Fort Lewis, Wash., is looking at equipment for upgrading the soldier's end of the system, she said. The Army's Training and Doctrine Command is recreating more than 495 courses, ranging from combat medical procedures to leadership development, to fit the DLP paradigm. TRADOC expects to convert 31 courses next year, she said, and 47 courses per year through 2010. Program costs are partially offset by an immediate decrease in related travel costs, she said.

Many kinds of military training feed off soldiers' interactions in the real world, Holmes said, and some senior officers worried DLP would harm training quality. Studies by the Army Research Institute, however, revealed that soldiers retained DLP information better and stayed proficient longer in the trained tasks.

That distance-learning students have better retention "is not an unusual finding" said Dr. Rod Ham, associate director for the Center of Distance Learning Research at Texas A&M University in Bryan, Texas. This may be due to the novelty of distance learning itself with students paying better attention because they are receiving information in a fresh, higher-tech mode, said Ham. Distance students by definition often also have a harder time getting access to educational opportunities and tend to pay more attention when they are available. Another part of the reason for better retention may be a general shift in how people access information and learn.

"Particularly with the younger folks in the military, and in the classroom, their medium of communication is through TV and through the Internet, Ham told United Press International in an interview." That's their communication system. So it is not totally surprising for them to learn better in the system that they communicate in.