ADVANCED DISTRIBUTED LEARNING
FORUM OF EXPERTS
Elisabet Malvebo and Joakim Carlsson
The Swedish Naval Warfare Center and the Military Academy Halmstad, Sweden
Elisabet has a special interest in development of learning spaces, didactics and methodology in professional education. Elisabet is co-author of the theoretical model of didactic spatial competence (DiSCo) and is a member of the board of the network for higher education pedagogy development Swednet.
Joakim Carlsson (Master Sergeant), Project Manager at the Military Academy Halmstad. Joakim has a special interest in blended learning and didactic in military education.
Formal learning spaces- an unseen asset for teaching and learning?
Sub-area: Designing and developing learning assets
The starting point for growth in the Swedish Armed Forces is to educate more conscripts, cadets and officers. This has put us in a situation where few have to educate many. In order to manage this we aim at developing methodology and increase the usage of digital tools for learning in a blended course design as well as make room for more students in our physical learning spaces. In this presentation we want to put focus on the physical learning space as an asset for teaching and learning. We might think post-covid that the physical space has shown itself of no interest – just go online! - but the tendency is the opposite. The physical space has an effect on learning and is more than ever intertwined with digital tools*. In this presentation we will try to shortly cover the research area and connect this to the development of learning spaces in the Swedish Armed Forces, giving you a retrospect on development work done so far and the path we see ahead.
*Leijon, M. & Tieva, Å. (2021). Framtidens lärandemiljöer. En forskningsbaserad översikt. Rapport för Akademiska Hus; Leijon, M., Nordmo, I., Tieva, Å. Troelsen, R. (2022). Formal learning spaces in higher education – a systematic review. Teaching in Higher Education, DOI:10.1080/13562517.2022.2066469
Multinational Division North, Denmark
Tore is a major from the Royal Danish Army with nearly 20 years of experience from deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and now as a staff officer on NATO´s eastern border as well as from being instructor on the Royal Danish Military Academy.
Victoria Grønning Iverssøn
The Royal Danish Defence College
Victoria has a masters degree in learning and innovative change. Victoria works at the Royal Danish Defence Colleges Educational Center where she, in addition to teaching trainers, sergeants, and officers in pedagogy and didactics, also advises and develops training courses and teaching materials.
”It’s a gut feeling” – using wargaming and simulations to support natural decision-making skills (NDM).
This presentation sheds some light on how the use of simulators and wargaming in leadership exercises can support operational art and the development of Naturalistic Decision-Making skills (NDM) as mentioned in the NATO doctrine.
Our observations shows that NDM processes frequently take place during leadership exercises, but that these opportunities are not exploited in order to enhance the training of NDM. Some of the reasons for this lie in the lack of knowing and understanding, what NDM actually is, but also in the complex nature of this skill and the fact that the training tends to focus primarily on learning the doctrinal military decision-making process.
The presentation offers an insight into how natural decision-making is expressed in practice, as well as give practical examples of how wargaming and simulator exercises among other learning activities can support the development of this complex experience based skill. In particular, we will focus on the importance of reflection-in-action, friction and feedback.
Royal Danish Defence College, Denmark
Linda Bendiks Hasselström has a Master of Arts in English and a minor subject in Design. Her interest and work have always revolved around teaching as well as developing materials for online students. Currently, Linda is employed as a Digital Educational consultant at The Royal Danish Defence College where she works with the implementation of Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Blended Learning in the Danish Defence.
Royal Danish Defence College, Denmark
Stefan Astrup Madsen is a Warrant Officer II in the Army with a long experience in Education and Training at the The Royal Guards. He also has a Master of Education and Learning.
Stefan is employed as a Digital Educational consultant at The Royal Danish Defence College where he works with the implementation of Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Blended Learning in the Danish Defence.
Practical usage of AI in teaching
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most rapidly developing fields of technology today. In particular, Chat GPT, the popular AI chatbot created by OpenAI, has achieved remarkable growth and success in the last few months. Chat GPT uses a large-scale language model that can generate natural and engaging conversations with humans on various topics. It has reached 100 million users just two months after launching, making it the fastest-growing app ever. It has also been praised for its safety and quality improvements achieved by using reinforcement learning from human feedback. Chat GPT is an example of how generative AI can create new forms of communication and interaction that have huge potential for various applications and domains.
This workshop focuses on using AI to generate texts and pictures. The content of this workshop is at a basic level and it is mainly aimed at users who are not very familiar with AI. Therefore, if you already have experience or knowledge of AI, you might find some parts of this workshop too simple or repetitive. Participants are required to bring a computer as the workshop contains practical exercises on how to generate pictures and texts using AI.
Advisor / Digital content producer
Gustav Sigholt Nyquist
Masterdegree in journalism and documentary. Worked with film and videoproduction since graduation in 2013.
Started at Norwegian Defence University College (NDUC) in 2019 as producer and have made around 400 videos during the time there.
Experiences and possibilities with videoproduction at NDUC
The purpose of the presentation is to showcase different kinds of videos we produce at NDUC.
When I started at NDUC, I had the mindset of producing videos effective and a large amount of them. During covid-19, all of our classroom-lectures went digital and we had to produce an abundance of videos, fast. I will talk about different "subgenres" of videolectures we use and the purpose of them. There will be a videotour of our studio and the necessary equipment, practical guidelines and mindset we think you need to be successful with videoproduction. You will see some of our bigger projects and some shorter and more ordinary ones.
The core of the presentation is showing and sharing the actual videos we have produced and experiences with them.
Administrative officer
Annasofie Wædeled-Møller
Royal Danish Defence College, Denmark
What Affects Learning Communities in a Digital Era and How To Approach That As Educators.
This presentation adresses the changing norms and rules of behaviour and interaction in physical versus digital communities and how this affects the (manily online) framework for Learning and Development and the role of the educator.
Lately the Danish Defence had cases of abusive and offensive behavior which, ofcourse, was scrutinized by the media. The “me too” waves were rolling but it’s different and worse when it happens for those in uniforms. That, alongside with encounters with frustrated educators across The Royal Danish Military Academy made me wonder: What happened to “esprit de corps” and “band of brothers”, that’s supposed to be in a soldiers DNA?
As a bystander and fellow practitioner it lead me to think that maybe we are not very good at just being around one another as we used to. Maybe it is no longer natural for us to take part in a community. And this complicates the framework for learning and development and challenges the role of the educator.
If you want to learn more about how communities of practice and communities of learning work, there are many great sources. The work of developmental psychologist Robert Keagan and Danish psychologist and researcher in leadership Svend Brinkmann alongside with Etienne Wenger, all offer some understandings on learning and development in communities.
To explain the collapse in our ability to be part of a community, I looked at the work of philosopher and logician, Vincent F Hendricks, that in his latest publications shed some light on WHY we struggle to participate in communities in a “post-factual” world where we act accordingly to the ”The Online Disinhibition Effect”. Our primary arena of socializing and acquiring norms and rules of behavior and behavioral adjustments takes place online, takes place in the “wild west”.
So the question is: how do we work with digital literacy in a way that improves our learning community and environment? Looking to Amy Edmonsons theory on psychological safety, we will address and discuss how we - across age, gender, abilities and preferences - figure out the norms and rules of interaction in a community of practice and learning. This will lead up to a panel discussion about how we, as participants in a community, could address basic values, attitudes and actions in both digital and physical communities.
Overview
Presentation of the concept “civil literacy”
Understand how the digital influences communities of practice and learning.
How to facilitate this discussion with students/colleagues.
eLearning Designer
Hanna Laakso (and the rest of the team)
Finnish Air Force Academy /Finnish Defence Forces, Finland
M.Sc. (tech) Ville Manninen works as an eLearning expert in the Army Academy of Finland. He also teaches military technology and has a strong background on applied mathematics.
M.Sc.IT Sonja Pyykkönen is a Digital Learning Specialist in The Border and Coast Guard Academy of The Finnish Border Guard. She leads the EdTech Team that is responsible for online course production and elearning environments and digital simulators.
M.Sc.Ed Hanna Markoff is an Education Specialist in the Finnish National Defence University. For the past few years her main areas at work have been digital pedagogy, eLearning, educational technology and learning environments.
M.Sc.Ed / BA Marko Pikkarainen works as Senior Planning Advisor in Defence Command Finland. His main working theme is 2030 century´s learning strategies. He is also Post Graduate studying in Turku University and making 60ects Learning and Teaching Specialization Program in Digital Environments.
How to create a working network for the development of digital competencies?
Improving and developing the digital skills of military personnel is an increasingly important topic, even during the post-Covid19 times. In this presentation, we introduce one way to achieve such a result in a form of biweekly educational online sessions. The topics of the session vary from very detailed examples of eLearning activities (such as Exam or H5P) or office tools (such as Excel) to more abstract pedagogical challenges (such as 'How to give a great hybrid lesson'). These sessions are organized and maintained by a self-directed interorganizational network between almost all of the military institutions in Finland.
In this presentation we talk about most important observations and lessons learned that has emerged during these two years. How it all started and what made it possible? To keep the sessions going, constant use of resources is required. The organizing network also learns, increasing our own competence in our daily work. This is one of the main points why this network keeps working. We also present our idea of sharing some of the workload to experts in order to harness the expertise from all over the organization.
Based on our observations, especially on those that didn't work, we need to develop our methods. At least we should find a way to move learning closer to learner and split the learning into smaller bites. We wish to share our ideas about future development and also involve our audience to share ideas to build digital competence for the military personnel.
Learning Consultant
Martin Hans Jensen and Mia Søgaard Hedlund
Royal Danish Defence College, Denmark
Mia Søgaard Hedlund has a Master of Science in Marketing and Communications and is currently studying a Master in Information- and Communications Technology and Learning. Mia has several years of experience as a teacher and is particularly interested in how technology is utilised to support students’ learning processes. Mia is employed as a Digital Educational Consultant at The Royal Danish Defence College where she works with the implementation of Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Blended Learning in the Danish Defence.
Podcast in teaching
Are you curious about how to use podcast in your teaching?
In this workshop, we will introduce theory on why and how using podcast can enhance your teaching and create flexibility for your students. Other topics we will introduce:
• Recording equipment
• Sound editing
• Different podcast genres
Be prepared to get tips and tricks and get started producing your own podcast. Bring your mobile phone as we will be working hands-on with various podcast elements.
Danish Army NCO School, Denmark
Captain Brian Lundberg Kristensen, head of training at the Danish Army NCO Scool. --->
WO-II Bob Ludvigsen and Captain Brian Lundberg Kristensen both work at the education section at the Danish Army NCO School and are thereby responsible for the practical development of electronically supported learning objects and the construction of learning processes as well as the didactic approach to the school's education programs.
Being an NCO is like mastering a craft. The essence of the profession is practically related. They use their hands, body and mind in the field, and at first glance, the making of NCOs and digital learning does not appear to be the perfect match.
However, our experiences showed us different, and by using training videos combined with Moodle as our platform, we witness a significant increase on the professional output amongst our trainees.
By using Moodle and videos prior to any tactical activity, we both support different learning preferences and at the same time, we are able to visualize, what will meet the trainees, when they show up in the field.
Due to lack of real scale training units at the NCO school, we instead looked for a digital solution. We will show examples of how, we have created animated videos in order to visualize platoon, company and battalion maneuvers.
During this workshop - (90 min.), the participants will for a moment become trainees at the Danish Army NCO School and try for them self to take part in a digitally supported lesson. To get the most out of this workshop, it is a good idea to bring some kind of device (mobile phone, iPad or laptop) so that you can take an active part in the exercises.
Ms Biljana Presnall
Jefferson Institute, USA
Learning analytics with Moodle
Moodle is a leader among open source LMSs with free price tag and over 175 million active users worldwide. In recent years, it introduced learning analytics tools as a core part of the LMS platform.
In this session, you will learn how easily you can utilize learning analytics and machine-learning driven models in Moodle. The powerful Moodle Analytics API allows Moodle site managers to create their own models by combining indicators and targets. The internally trained machine-learning algorithm uses the predefined paths to predict the probability of the target. For example, you can foresee chances of a student leaving their studies. In such a case, a set of certain automated mitigation actions can be executed, e.g. sending a notification or reminder to the student, or feeding reports to support building new adaptive learning environment.
We will show in detail how to enable and deploy learning analytics, create and train custom models, gain specific insight reports, and execute bulk actions.
Master Sergeant Joakim Carlsson and Educational Developer Elisabet Malvebo
SWEDISH ARMED FORCES, Sweden
Elisabet Malvebo (Phil.Lic./M.A.), Educational developer at the Swedish Naval Warfare Center.
Elisabet has a special interest in development of learning spaces, didactics and methodology in
professional education.
Elisabet is co-author of the theoretical model of didactic spatial competence (DiSCo) and is a member of the board of the network for higher education pedagogy development Swednet.
ABC LD - Workshop
(Arena Blended Connected Learning Design)
ABC learning design is a method to help teachers review and redesign their courses for blended modes.
Originally run as hand-on face-to-face workshops, in just 90 minutes teaching teams work together to create a visual ‘storyboard’ of activities representing the student journey.
ABC has been found particularly useful for new courses/programmes or those changing to an online or more blended format. The approach generates high levels of engagement, and stimulates creative informed dialogue and group reflection about course design.
Mr. Aldo C. Schellenberg
Switzerland
After graduating, he initially pursued a civil career as a management consultant and was a well-known expert witness in white-collar crime cases in Switzerland.
Parallel to his civilian career, Aldo pursued a reserve officer career and held various troop commands. At the end of his reserve career, he was Chief of Staff of a mountain infantry division (Switzerland has a conscription system in which reserve officers hold active troop commands).
In 2010, he was appointed commander of a mountain infantry brigade by the Ministry of Defence and joined the armed forces as a brigadier general.
From 2012, he was elected by the Swiss government as Chief of Armed Forces Staff (Major General) and member of the Armed Forces High Command.
In 2013, he was promoted to Lieutenant General and took over the command of the Swiss Air Force. As of 2017, he was Deputy CHOD at the same time as his other functions.
In view of the reorganisation of the armed forces, he also led the transformation of the Joint Staff into a Joint Operation Command in parallel from 2017, which he took over in 2018.
Aldo took ordinary retirement at the end of 2020 and has since been active as a board member and advisor to various major companies.
How to be the ultimate warrior without firing one bullet (almost) ?
Technology brings a lot of new possibilities in Training. For example, you will be a better warrior if you do the drills repeatedly. Simulators can make it happen with fewer logistics, less coordination, and fewer safety measurements, and it's less expensive. You can come with your unit to the simulator and start Training. You don't need anyone in most cases.
In the infantry, we can see significant development in training the ultimate warrior without firing one bullet (almost).
WARTAC (Warrior readiness training center) is a new methodology for home base training of individual soldiers, squads, and commanders.
What is WARTAC?
WARTAC is a static or mobile indoor and outdoor training platform designed to improve individual combat skills and unit tactical skills.
The WARTAC integrates several training technologies, including virtual and live simulation, indoor and outdoor, into a central management tool.
The WARTAC is a Company-level training across three facilities by platoon: live fire range, urban tactical engagement simulation, and WARTAC indoor simulators.
Training fundamental soldier skills from the 1st week
Performant manager - Real-time performance monitoring, measurement, and analysis of all trainee training data (performances, tasks, bio-metric, and other relevant information).
Data collection for AAR and analysis
So with this tech, you can train a lot and shoot less (live fire). Soldiers can
learn basic weapon & engagement skills, then move Training on advanced weapon skills Cognitive, escalation of force) and even do collective Training.
It's practical and brings results. With WARTAC you find the unit in advanced stages after three weeks. Just train; nothing else matters. Mission readiness is what good simulators and WARTAC brings to units.
Dr. Stefan Stenbom
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Designing digital learning environments using the Community of Inquiry framework.
This workshop follows up on the "Digital Learning as a Community of Inquiry" keynote presentation. The Community of Inquiry framework is a widely recognized approach to understanding and improving the quality of digital learning. The workshop will provide you with hands-on experience of designing a digital learning environment using the framework through case studies and interactive activities. We will also discuss how various technologies and teaching strategies to support cognitive, social, and teaching presence can be implemented in your own digital learning environments.
Producer
Mikko Pohjola
The Finnish Defence Forces ADL Office, Finland
He is also a product owner of all the archived video material and has a large knowledge base of all the educational videos and the conscript training behind the efficient nationwide media producing capabilities in The Finnish Defence Forces.
From classroom to web - How The Finnish Defence Forces changed the training of media conscripts
During Covid-19 The Finnish Defence Forces completely changed its way of thinking about the media conscript training. The transition from residential classroom and practical training (approximately a week training) to online and remote work was not an easy task as the training is a mandatory for nationwide in-line production and efficiency standard. We share the process of change and show some of tools that made the transition possible without any drops in the constancy and performance from the previous line of training.
Mr. Gigi Roman
Gigi Roman is a Course Director of the NATO eLearning Instructional Design course and the Advanced Distributed Learning (eLearning) Coordinator responsible for NATO School's online education, training and online content management, including new product design and strategic relationships for the organization learning management system, authoring tools and collaboration solutions.
In previous roles with NATO School and PfP community, he has overseen the development of web-based knowledge management systems and the re purposing of instructional materials for online delivery.
Producing video lectures using Open Broadcasting Software (OBS)
For most education and training facilities, online training and education became in the last last years the only way to continue providing their students education and training needed. Therefore eLearning experts, educators and of course organizations looked into options to repurpose course continent in various online forms including video lectures. The aim of this workshop is to share the best practices from producing video lectures using Open Broadcasting Software - OBS. During a 40 minutes session, Mr. Roman will provide hands on demonstration, starting with Open Broadcaster Software overview, continuing with basic settings for adding a scene with video, audio, image background, window, display and/or browser captures including findings and practical examples for recording video lectures using this open source software. He will be also available for discussions.
NATO CIV
Salih Cem Kumsal
NATO HQ SACT, USA
SCRUM and Prince2 certified Program/Project Manager with broad experience.
Utilizing 5G theatre network for a mixed reality training solution (NATO SATCOM Technician Training).
This session will talk about the results of an experiment that NATO HQ SACT conducted in November 2022 in Latvian 5G testbed.
The goal was to conduct a proof-of-concept experiment in order to deliver expert level training and assistance through virtual means combining augmented reality, virtual reality, and 5G technologies.
Our main objectives were:
- Demonstrate technologies that provide distance learning in high fidelity and assistance in real time using combination of AR/VR and 5G technologies.
- Determine technical parameters of this application of this technology in order to support the scaling of such applications in military environments.
- To provide direction for further development of the technology solution for NATO and to plan for subsequent more elaborate demonstrations.
- Understand interoperability related aspects.
Mr. Magnus Gudmundsson
Magnus Gudmundsson, Civil project manager in educational development for netbased training at the Military Academy in Halmstad in the unit for leadership and pedagogy. I trained in interactive media 1999-2000. Started as a data systems engineer and programmer for the swedish ermed forces in 2000. From 2004-2014, I was a producer of digital learning resources within the Swedish armed forces. Since then, I have been working in educational development with a focus on new technologies in digital learning such as VR, AR, and AI providing technical support for online learning.
Train practically digitally with VR – A proof of concept.
The project aims to investigate the potential benefits of using VR technology as a digital learning resource for training and assessment in the Swedish Armed Forces. The main question being examined is whether soldiers become better decision-makers under pressure when they have the ability to train as much as they want, regardless of time and resources.
The project also aims to determine the requirements for learning resources and systems for VR training scenarios. The proposal is to test the technology with a group of five individuals who have access to train in a VR environment while the rest train traditionally, and to compare the results between the two groups, The project has developed 3 virtual environments and 3 scenarios for decision-making training. The system uses off-the-shelf products and is designed to interpret voice commands and identify unsafe areas. There is also interest in researching the use of VR in education for understanding how people interact with others, how they handle deviant behavior, and how they make decisions in difficult situations.
Keynote speakers: 45 mins.
Speakers (Auditorium): 30 mins.
Parallel sessions: 40 mins.
Workshops: 2x40 mins. or
Workshop: 90 mins.
INCLUDING QUESTIONS!
Exhibition in every break