Improving the Army's Assessment of Interactive Multimedia Instruction Courseware

Abstract : Since 1998, the Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) has been engaged in establishing and fielding The Army Distributed Learning Program (TADLP) to enhance and extend traditional methods of learning within the Army's training strategy. Distributed learning (DL) is intended to speed the pace of learning and allow training to take place when and where soldiers need it. The Army has an expansive vision of a greatly increased role for DL over time. Given this expectation, an important component of TADLP's overall performance is the quality of its courses, which consist primarily of asynchronous interactive multimedia instruction (IMI). An assessment of IMI quality is necessary for strategic planning-to understand TADLP outputs, to manage budgets devoted to increasing quality, and to identify and implement needed improvements to processes that affect quality. Moreover, ensuring and documenting the quality of IMI courseware are important to show the value of this type of instruction, to gain the buy-in of DL stakeholders, and to secure the resources needed to achieve the program's goals.