The ongoing Regional ADL Initiative (RADLI) fosters the expansion of eLearning capabilities in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Slovenia through professional networking, standards, technical skills, and collaborative innovation.

Jefferson Institute, with the generous support of the Kingdom of Norway, has played a principal role in the conceptualization and execution of the RADLI project, and we joined with representatives of the four RADLI countries in Ohrid, North Macedonia for the two-day conference. Topics of discussion included the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on developments in ADL, RADLI nations’ eLearning benchmarks and innovations, and plans for future collaborative and practical efforts to further build distributed learning capacity in the participating countries, such as developing and sharing an inventory of courses and course templates and utilizing North Macedonia’s “Summer Campus” as a future training exercise venue.

September 13, 2021

The conference attendees credited RADLI with helping them rapidly shift all training to online when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and significantly aiding their transition toward a post-pandemic hybrid training model with wider integration of eLearning. Discussion emphasized the need for adopting a Total Learning Architecture (TLA) approach to understand and navigate the ecosystem of ADL tasks, roles, and platforms and modernize learning. The RADLI country representatives also reported on their completion of Capability Maturity Models (CMM) analyzing the current status of their ADL programs and giving each nation a comprehensive overview of the resources, expertise, and capabilities they require to optimize their use of distributed learning.

The Ministry of Defense of the Kingdom of Norway provided generous financial support for the conference, covering the expenses for representatives’ travel, accommodation, conference materials, training, and the venue. The funding is part of a Norwegian multi-year Capacity Building project underwriting Jefferson Institute efforts to develop regional cooperation in southeast Europe and the eLearning systems of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Slovenia.