Sixth ADL Forum in Suffolk

I attended the Sixth ADL Forum in Suffolk, Va.

Written by Paul Thurkettle, LMS Admin
Wednesday, 31 August 2011 09:54

Despite the impact of Hurricane Irene, 37 attendees made it to the 2011 Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Forum held at the Virginia Modelling and Simulation Centre in Suffolk, Virginia.

“It was getting very worrying as we did not know what impact the storm would have on us”, stated Paul Thurkettle from the Education and Training Technologies section under ACOS JETE. “We made the decision to go ahead and thankfully 94% of our travellers made it with some interesting tales and adventures”.

The annual ADL Forum now in its sixth year invites ADL developers from NATO and partner nations, users of ADL and academics in the eLearning field together to discuss the ADL program, NATO direction and guidance and discuss best practices for online courses, lessons learned and the latest in academic theory for adult training. The Forum also has representation from Joint Force Command Brunssum and will discuss the ISAF ADL program.


With attendees from NATO education and training centres, NATO commands, Centres of Excellence, Partnership Training Centres and nations including Ukraine, Moldova, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, United States and Slovenia the Forum creates an atmosphere of mutual cooperation.

“With ADL now a major program in many of our nations, we all share the same issues and ambitions, at the forum we can discuss who is doing what and where we can work together or share results”, added Dr. Sürsal, head of the Education and Training Technologies section. “This makes the forum a very valuable asset to ACT, both in letting the community know what the ACT direction and guidance is, as well as seeing and learning where nations are going and what they have done”.

Assistant Chief of Staff, Joint Education, Training and Exercises, Brigadier General Dourouklis (Greek Army) addressed the Forum emphasising the need to work together as well as the key message Deputy Chief of Staff Joint Force Trainer Lieutenant General Karlheinz Viereck gave to the African E-Learning conference on the need to create a global community in order to reach all the potential audience NATO needs to in order to fully prepare for the future.

The Forum runs from Aug 30th to Sep 1st.