As a member of NATO’s Individual Training & Education Development task group, we spearheaded the drafting and adoption of the NATO ADL Handbook annex “Advanced Distributed Learning in Exercises.” The annex presents methods and best practices for developing and integrating ADL into all types and levels military training exercises, experimentation, mission rehearsals, and war gaming. It provides a practical, validated set of guidelines that both the military exercise community and the ADL community can relate to and act upon.

Integrating eLearning into military exercises enhances the quality of training. Distributed learning enables exercise planners to provide cost-effective, easily accessible, highly learnable courses and materials that can be tailored to address specific knowledge gaps, training objectives, and exercise scenarios.

ADL integration also helps resolve a major training conundrum: Training is vital to mission success, yet it is difficult to quantify the impact of any particular event or exercise. Distributed learning return-on- investment (ROI) analysis utilizes Hard and Soft data collected during exercise pre-training, the exercise event, and post-exercise evaluation to measure trainee achievement. This analysis empowers commanders and managers to maximize and justify the expenditure of limited training resources.