NATO “Advanced Distributed Learning” Working Group (ADL WG)

Between 22 and 26 April 2019, MAJ OGÎGĂU-NEAMȚIU Florin, Head of the IT Compartment of DRESMARA, participated in the meeting of the NATO Working Group for Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) within the PfP Consortium of Defense Academies and Institutes of Security Studies, hosted in the Parliament Building of the Republic of North Macedonia from Skopje

The Working Group was opened by Macedonian Defense Minister Ms. SHEKERINSKA RADMILA, who stressed that an important direction for North Macedonia is the use of IT in education and cooperation with NATO in this field.

More than 40 representatives of defense education and training institutions from NATO and partner countries attended the event, with representatives from Kazakhstan and Ghana taking part in the event for the first time.

During the activities there were presented current aspects of distributed learning, national initiatives in the related field, the evolution of international projects in the field developed through the Defense Education Enhancement Programme (DEEP), the problems encountered with the ADL programs in the education systems and ways in which technology can be integrated into the educational programs to take advantage of it.

At NATO level, the introduction of IT use in educational programs has seen a significant increase, so at the level of Allied Command for Transformation (ACT) the ADL component (e-learning) has been integrated with the modeling and simulation structure to improve the interaction between the two and increasing the efficiency of educational programs based on the use of IT. In this respect, NATO supported the largest event dedicated to modeling and simulation in the world (https://www.act.nato.int/nato-supports-largest-modelling-simulation-and-training-event-in-the-world) and will host the “NATO Training Technology Conference” on June 11-13, 2019, dedicated to those who are looking for new tools, technologies or strategies to integrate technology into the educational process.