WS/PS period 1 (Tuesday)

Mr Rob Chadwick
Web Developer ADL Initiative

Rob Chadwick is a web developer and artist who has been working in the digital media field for more than fifteen years. In that time, he has designed custom game engines, managed render farms, and written productivity tools. He has designed simulations for the FBI and the U.S. Navy using custom and off-the-shelf game software, and animated virtual spaces for architecture and interior design. Rob has worked for the last 7 years with Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) to foster interoperability of 3D assets, HTML5, and to bring immersive simulation to the web. His work at ADL includes standardization of the Experience API (xAPI), automated specification testing, and development of various online digital content registries and repositories.

Measuring learning and tracking learning activities (xAPI)

xAPI-workshop

(80min)

Lt (res) Kalle Huhtala
Edita Publishing Ltd.

Kalle Huhtala is Director of Development at Edita Publishing Ltd. His main areas at work are the development of advanced digital learning materials, the concept of learning at work and the use of gamification. Kalle has a long history with the Finnish Defence Forces, working in many extensive multimedia-based eLearning courses. His video biography can be found here: http://youtu.be/JJwXhB8orWc.

Content production

Using Powtoon for Building Animated Cartoon Stories and Lessons

We are all familiar with the visual language of animated cartoons and comics since before we could read. The simplified and exaggerated way of graphically illustrating stories and ideas makes it easy to catch the attention of the audience. Keeping a story short and to the point retains audience focus through the presentation and also forces the storyteller to concentrate on the most important things that need to be told.

Powtoon is a browser-based tool for animated storytelling, that makes it easy to produce short or long presentations for explaining, selling or training. Powtoon includes a rich set of ready-to-use story templates, characters, props and effects that can be modified in many ways to create versatile stories. The stories are built on an easy to use timeline and can be published in many formats.

During 20 years I have used and developed many eLearning content production tools. In my opinion Powtoon is one of the best in its field. In this workshop I will demonstrate how to build a story using Powtoon.

(2*40min)

Mr Ramin Darisiro
Senior Adviser Norwegian Defense University College

Mr. Ramin Darisiro is working as senior project manager at Norwegian Defense University College (NoDUC), ADL Section. In addition to being a strategic learning advisor, Ramin is responsible for several ADL projects within Armed Forces focusing on pedagogical use of technology in teaching, training and collaboration. Mr. Darisiro is project leader for concept development an experimentation (CD&E) and collaborates actively with NoD Research Establishment (FFI) and other partners.

Mr. R. Darisiro is an educated engineer and has a pedagogical degree. He holds also a master degree (Master of Management (innovation)) from Norwegian School of Business and Economy, BI. In addition to that he is also certificated project manager.
He has worked with ITC in public sectors since 1998, and has a lot of experience from school systems, from an educational perspective as well as management. As of 2008, Ramin has participated in the development of various ITC concepts within Armed Forces.

Educational programs using blended learning

Blended learning - What about Office 365?

In this workshop I will focus on experiences and using Office 365 at The Defense University College (NDUC) and all possibility in a blended learning context. What distinguishes Office 365 from a traditional LMS and the opportunities this provides? During the workshop, participants get examples of learning activities in Office 365 in addition to hands-on exercises. Requirements for participants are laptop (PC / Mac) and access to Office 365.

(2*40min)

Ms Heli Häyrynen
MA, Doctoral Student
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Head of Continuing Education and Training in the Finnish National Defence University

Educational programs using blended learning

ADL course: Basic knowledge of the Finnish defense forces

The Finnish Defense Forces changed dramatically starting in 2010, when we had a big administration overhaul. The change also affected production of continuing training. Training needed to be economic, efficient, motivating and to allow independent studying regardless of time or place. It needed to be brought online, the modules were to be as interchangeable as possible. Overlapping needed to be removed and administrative limits faded out. This given framework and set of regulations created the idea of this course. The course is a part of the digitalization of our education.

Basic knowledge of the defense forces is, true to its name, a mandatory familiarization course for new employees of the Finnish Defense Forces. It falls under the purview of Human Resources and will be carried out nationally in all defense branches.

The course unify our reservists knowledge before any refresher courses. We can also strengthen the individuals willingness to defend Finland.
For conscripts, the course builds positive image of the defense forces through a modern learning platform, while adding common knowledge and commitment to reservism. This also supports the recruitment of future officers and other personnel.

Even though the course is under the purview of Human Resources, it contains many elements that can be detached and used somewhere else in continuing training. The course modules have been designed in a way that there are portions ready to be copied and implemented to other training entities.

With prerecorded video lectures and digital lectures with appropriately themed illustrations included, we can redirect and allot our faculty hours to other tasks. The course serves the defense forces pervasively in different branches and all three levels of continuing education.

The learning material consists mainly of videos created with simple devices.
We had a wide array of experts from all branches and levels as interviewees. We were very delighted of the willingness of everyone and cooperation was the key to a very good end result. We also used a wide span of defense forces open source material while building the learning materials: podcasts, photos from the historical war photo archives, youtube-videos, defense forces leadership twitter accounts and of course electronic documents.

We used many gamification principles in the course taskings and some of the military context games already available. The new visual look of the defense forces and the new website was tried to use as their maximum extent, for example by linking students to search information from our website.

The course can be taken one module at a time never completing the entire course, but this will not accrue any transscripts or certificates. The course if the first MOOC (massive online open course) of the Finnish Defense Forces and we are expecting about five thousand annual completions after launch.

(2*40min)

WS/PS period 2 (Tuesday)

WO-II Bob Ludvigsen
Royal Danish Defense College

Bob Ludvigsen is a Warrant Officer II in the Army. He has 15 years' of experience in training conscripts and NCO´s in infantry skills. After that period he was assigned to the Danish Defence Combat School for 6 years. Here he trained officers and NCO´s to become commanders on armored vehicles. He has been deployed to ex. Yugoslavia for one tour, and a deployment to the NATO HQ in Belgium for a period of 3 years.

In 2008 he was assigned to the Danish Defence Electronic School. Here he uses his competences to design and develop Serious Games, e-learning and mobile learning

Practical use of (emerging) learning technologies

Virtual World Sandbox

Build a 2D multiplayer game in Virtual World Sandbox.

The Virtual World Sandbox (VWS) is an open source game development tool built in HTML5, by The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative.

VWS makes it easy to develop, maintain and deploy games, simulations or learning content.

In this workshop, we will build a dilemma game; the plot is as follows:

The game takes place at a frigate deployed into an area of extensive piracy. The situation is that two messages reaches the frigate bridge, the first is from a civilian ship, which is about 1 hour away, and pirates are attacking the ship. The ship has a six men crew and the cargo consists of consumer goods. The second message is a distress signal from a ship with 200 boat refugees, the ship is in a heeled damaged condition and will most likely go under within a few hours, there are no rescue boats and the waters are shark infested. The ship with the refugees is about 45 minutes away in the opposite direction of the pirate attack. The nearest naval vessel is 4 hours away. Now it is up to the captain to make some decisions!!

We have three roles in the game: the Captain of the frigate, a helicopter pilot, the captain of the civilian ship. The remaining roles are AI controlled.

The after action report in the game is supported by xApi, another application built by the ADL Initiative. We will set this up and demonstrate how it works.

You are welcome to bring your own laptop to the workshop and build the game yourself. The code, graphics and instructions will be provided at the workshop.

(80min)

Commander Geir Isaksen
Norwegian Defence University College

Commander (CDR) Geir Isaksen has more than twelve years in the field of Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) and has been responsible for more than twenty e-learning projects, and different R&D projects in the field of e-learning, m-learning, online learning, standardization and emerging technologies. CDR Isaksen has a master's degree in information computer technology & learning from the University of Aalborg (2014) and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, from Vestfold University College (1998).

In addition, he has completed several university courses in pedagogies, learning styles and crew resource management. CDR Isaksen holds the position as an ADL Staff Officer at the Norwegian Defense University College (NoDUC)/ADL office, where he is responsible for leading and coordinating procurement, development and implementation of ADL projects.

His military background is from the Navy, serving on submarines for six years as an electro engineer. CDR Isaksen spent two years as the head instructor in the technical simulator at the Royal Norwegian Submarine School before he started to work at the ADL office in 2002.

He was a member of the NATO Training Group Task Group IT/ED from 2005 to 2012, where he was the ADL subgroup chairman until May 2011. As the Norwegian ADL Partnership executive director and a member of the NORDEFCO ADL forum of experts, he works closely with international partners.

Content production

HOW VIDEO LECTURES CAN RELEASE TIME FOR OTHER LEARNING ACIVITIES 

The Norwegian Defense University College (NoDUC) are continuously challenged to reduce costs and increase quality in our educational system. Starting in 2017, the educational sector within the Armed forces, are challenged to reduce costs with over 60 million US dollars. Less money, fewer instructors and less time for the students allowed away from the home unit, forces NoD to rethink how much time students can spend in campus away from home and how NoD conduct and offer courses online.

This workshop will highlight how video lectures have begun to replace the traditional classroom power point based lectures in military. Furthermore, this paper discusses how NoDUC, based on well know learning principles, uses an in-house video studio to produce video lectures in close cooperation with the Subject Matter Experts (SME). Finally, the paper will present the evaluation results from NoD students using online video lectures and show how online video lectures helps to reduce costs for the Norwegian Armed Forces (NoAF).

(2*40min)

Mr Torben Møller
Civ/Webmaster Danish Homeguard Academy

Working with learning and technology @ The Danish Home Guard Academy. The speaker holds a BA in teaching and MA in ICT and Learning.

Content production

How to produce content with Screencast-O-Matic?

Workshop: What is Screencast-O-Matic and how does it work?
In this workshop the speaker will give you an short introduction to the screen recorder "Screencast-O-Matic", afterwards you'll get your own "hands on" the program and work with it at your own PC/Mac.
Remember to bring your own PC/Mac to the workshop (the PC/Mac must be connected to the conference wifi network. The Screencast-O-Matic program is a online program).

(2*40min)

Ms Malin Jansson
CEO Lexicon Interactive

Malin Jansson is the CEO of Lexicon Interactive, a company specialising in digital training solutions, where her main focus is development and using new technology to make digital trainings efficient and adaptable to target groups. During the past 10 years Malin has helped the major companies in the Swedish Financial Services market to build extensive competence-building efforts and blended learning programs. Malin has also been responsible for developing many comprehensive e-learning trainings, with a clear focus on the participants' needs, target achievement and responsiveness/accessibility. She also has extensive experience in Learning Management Systems.

Motivational and pedagogical learning strategies

Mobile Learning

(2*40min)

WS/PS period 1 (Wednesday)

Mr Stefan Bedin
CEO Wezupport

Stefan is a concept developer with a focus on online learning and new ways to build online based learning structures. 

Mr Dan Gustafsson
CEO Wezupport

Dan is a senior advisor and specialized in training and online webinars.

Re-designing learning spaces

The Remote Teaching Concept

Remote Teaching Concept is based on a holistic approach to train teachers and educators in depth, creating a quality learning environment for teachers and students and ensure various services that provides support for the complete online environment.

Remote Teaching opens many new opportunities. The availability increases and the possibility to make use of specialists or other geographically independent expertise will create a new flexibility. Many times it may even be difficult to gather a group for training in the same geographical location which may mean that only some have access to the necessary knowledge.

The emergence of Remote Teaching also means that organizations can design their work processes in a new and more effective way, more mobile, flexible, and geographically independent.

To succeed in Remote Teaching is a challenge to design the whole process and provide online learning experiences that match or exceed the quality of on-site learning.

(80min)

Associate Professor Martin Hans Jensen
Royal Danish Defense College

Martin Hans Jensen holds a Bachelor of education and Master of Information technology. For more than a decade, Martin has been dedicated in the area of tension between learning and IT. Today Martin is Associate Professor at The Royal Danish Defense College, and here he works with the implementation of Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Blended Learning in the Danish Defense.

Practical use of (emerging) learning technologies

NORDICADL.COM Toolbox- digital learning tools for the classroom

Do you use technology in your classroom? If yes: Come to this workshop. If no: Come to this workshop.
The use of technology in your classroom can be a great motivator for your students, and in the same time be an important source for better and deeper learning.
The presence of laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc, gives you - as the teacher - a perfect step stone for use of Technology-Enhanced Teaching. There is a lot of great and free tools at the Internet, but it can be difficult to find the best. At NordicADL.com you can find a toolbox with recommendations of a lot of great tools.
In this workshop I will give you a short introduction to the ADL toolbox, and you will try my "top 5 free online tools". But you must be prepared! When you leave this workshop, you will have brand new ideas for your own Technology-Enhanced Teaching.

(2*40min)

Mr Ville Tuominen
Adviser Online Learning North Karelia Vocational Education and Training Consortium

Ville Tuominen is responsible on vocational eLearning unit North Karelia eCollege at PKKY (North Karelia municipal education and training consortium). Unit provides studies online for vocational students and lead the development of eLearning environments at PKKY. Ville has also been the PKKY lead in the NASA's Epic Challenge program. Ville has been working in educational ITC projects and been leader of eCollege since 2009. Before PKKY and eCollege he has been working in head teacher of humanistic studies and also as a mathematic, physic and ITC teacher. Ville has also been working in Finland's national curriculum project for national board of education years 2005 - 2007. His special field of experiments and his own research is on pedagogical models, intelligent information systems and measuring learning thru learning environments.

Measuring learning and tracking learning activities (xAPI)

How utilize xAPI to develop better online studies and learning online: Case North Karelia eCollege

Key takeaways:

• New concept of utilizing phenomenon- / story-based learning and a digital learning environment, where students can learn place, time and device independently.
• Utilising xAPI in measuring, analyzing, and forecasting learning, and improving learning quality
• Using visual learning reports in motivating students and providing instructors easy ways to see patterns in learning processes
• Supporting students in creating personalized learning content.
• North Karelia eCollege - Training Goes Global

(2*40min)

Ms Kim Blomqvist
Key Account Manager/E-Learning Specialist, Itslearning AB

Re-designing learning spaces

Universal Design Learning-UDL

By now you have probably heard of Universal Design Learning or UDL as it is commonally referred to but do you know what it stands for, what it advocates and what it means for you as a teacher or a organization ? When you speak of UDL for learning it is referring to designing curriculum and teaching in a way that offers all individuals equal opportunity to learn. The notion of UDL stems from architecture and product design and seeks to build a learning environment that is suitable for each and every learner. Everyone comes into a learning environment with a different set of skills, experience, interest and needs that is unique to that person thus a one size fit solution is ineffective as appose to a flexible approach that can be varied and adjusted to suite each learner. The goal is to have as many learners as possible be able to take in content and develop skills through solutions that are designed to suite their specific individual needs. Of course this requires knowledge and understanding of the model itself, support from school management, pedagogical skills, as well as tools to aid and enable working with UDL.

(2*40min)

WS/PS period 2 (Wednesday) 

Mr Julian Stodd
Sea Salt Learning

Author, Speaker, Captain at Sea Salt Learning, helping organisations understand the Social Age.

I split my time between research and writing about learning, through my books and blog, alongside consultancy and delivering projects out in the real world with my crew at SeaSalt Learning.

Much of my consultancy work is around core elements of the Social Age: the need for Social Leadership, the design of Scaffolded Social Learning, planning for Organisational Change and the impacts of Social Collaborative Technology.

Working with global organisations on both strategy and execution, I help them find their way through this new world. I help them develop an architecture for learning and change.

My writing is at www.julianstodd.wordpress.com

Motivational and pedagogical learning strategies

Designing Effective Social Learning

There's a lot of talk about Social Learning, but many organisations are struggling to implement it effectively. They are unsure what technology to use, or they have technology, but can't generate engagement. They may be unsure how to design the experience or support the community. One thing is for sure: traditional design skills will not suffice in a Social Learning space. We need to learn.

In this session, we will explore how to design a Scaffolded Social Learning programme.

1. We will explore which technologies we can use
2. We will look at how to approach learning design
3. We will consider how we build the community and manage it
4. We will look at how we build legacy out of the learning and measure ROI

(80min)

Dr Thomas Archibald
IDSI

Dr. Tom Archibald possesses extensive national and international experience and expertise in human performance technology, instructional systems design, and educational psychology within academia, government, and industry.Dr. Archibald's areas of interest include creativity and human performance, competency-based learning, sports psychology, distributed cognition, and agile project management. Dr. Archibald is currently the Technical Director at Intelligent Decision Systems, Inc (IDSI).

Measuring learning and tracking learning activities (xAPI)

Data Dashboards and Non-Training Interventions

While training is commonly identified as the first solution to improving performance, non-training interventions can be equally, if not more impactful. This presentation will discuss the performance improvement potential of data dashboard interventions, including requirements gathering challenges, development procedures, and implementation recommendations within Department of Defense environments.

(2*40min)

Mr Salih Cem Kumsal
Civ NATO HQ SACT

Retired Navy Commander. Worked at JWC and JFTC as CAX Enginner. Now working as E&IT Technology Staff Officer at HQ SACT.

Practical use of (emerging) learning technologies

Virtual Operations HQ

"The level of complexity in the coalition environment demands a rehearsal framework in pre-deployment training" (US CENTCOM CCJ6-P). To extend the Afghan Mission Network Training, Staging and Mission networks model to a Federated Mission Networking (FMN) spirals-based environment, the authors propose an approach to support the operational readiness capability process preparing transitioning forces during the pre-deployment and deployment phases. This approach exploits Modelling and Simulation (M&S) tools within a web-based training framework and it is designed to suit with a FMN environment.

The authors present a use case to provide a training framework suitable to be adherent to pre-deployment and deployment training "as we Partner", Linked Training, Connected Force Initiatives matching the requirements for a Command Post Operational readiness: "The Virtual Operation Head Quarter". This web-based application is intended to be used supporting Head Quarter (HQ) rapid prototyping to train personnel through a Virtual Worlds environment integrated via next generation of I\O systems. It is suitable to be used for the following training objectives: individual and collective HQ layout and systems familiarization; collective training for Commander and staff focusing on cross functional/operational planning, collaboration and team building; HQ mission rehearsal and personnel pre-handover/rotation tasks and activities. System offers greater training schedule flexibility, lower costs and less travel time with less impact on the environment.
In conclusion the proposed paper shows a possible approach to command post Operational Readiness development within an innovative concepts of using virtual simulation, serious game technology and next generation of immersive devices coupled to conduct several training and exercise activities in a web-based networked environment. Furthermore this cost-effective platform architecture will be suitable to be implemented at the NATO M&S Centre of Excellence to provide to nations and military organizations, with an appropriate business model to be developed, this capability under a Modelling and Simulation Platform as a service paradigm.

(2*40min)

Maria Back-Nilsson
Project Manager Military Academy Karlberg

Maria holds a degree of Master of Social Science in Corporate Finance, Marketing and Pedagogy and is a qualified university teacher. She currently works as Project Manager of the Management Training Unit´s netbased learning productions, both in terms of updating existing productions as well as producing new ones. The main focus lies on integrating an extended amount of "Blended Learning" and enhance the pedagogic view in the forthcoming productions.

Maria has more than 19 year´s of experience from the Swedish Defense and has previously been acting as a Course Director within the unit´s Logistic courses and has also been a Civilian-Military Instructor at the Swedish Defense International Training Unit (SWEDINT) and have experience from both NATO- and EU-missions abroad.

Josefin Wittzell
Course director, HRM at The Management Training Unit, Military Academy Karlberg

Josefin holds a degree of Bachelor of Social Science from Program in Human Resource Management (HRM), and is currently working as a Course director in HRM at The Management Training Unit, Military Academy Karlberg.

Previously she has been acting as a Human Resource specialist with more than 16 years' experience of supporting commanders at different levels within the Swedish Armed Forces.

In the project of developing the "Netbased Commander and Employer concept" she was responsible for coordinating the HR-related modules. 

Motivational and pedagogical learning strategies

The Commander as Employer, a new approach to employer support – enhancing skills through blended learning

The Commander as Employer, a new approach to employer support – enhancing skills through blended learning
In 2009 the Swedish Defense Forces cut back on conscription recruitment, and for the first time started to employ professional soldiers. This transformation coincided with a vast transformation of the local Human Resources (HR) -support, the local HR-departments in the units were reduced by half and a merged into a centralized, joint HR-unit. Alongside this HR-support transformation and the implementation of the new SAP-based business system with Manager Self Service modules, the legal responsibility of the employer processes and work related issues was pushed out as far as to the first line commanders, whom were very inexperienced and lacked basic training in employer skills and facts.

The first line commanders, military employed as well as civilians alike, were a quite large number of people and all in need of training in employer skills – skills such as legislative issues, work environment and socio-organizational emphasis, terms of payments, terms of leave, recruitment processes etc. The training at first took place via classroom set courses, but as the need of training showed to be larger than the training facilities could handle, a new concept had to be made up.

The Management Training Unit at the Military Academy of Karlberg, whom already had the task to provide the classroom training, took on the task and created an Online-concept consisting of 15 modules in different topics within the HR-area, work related environment, logistics and financing and economy. The concept is accompanied by a network of contact persons out in the units in the field as well as by Intranet-Sharepoint solutions.

In this session, members of the project team will provide you with their experience of setting up these 15 modules, how they overcame problems in convincing their subject matter experts of going online instead of classroom training, how they implemented the concept successfully and now have made their online concept a daily used employer support, available to more than 3.500 first line commanders at different levels within the Swedish Defense Forces.

(2*40min)