Digitized textbooks have been around for over 20 years. They gained prominence after 1998, when the first dedicated eBook readers were introduced and the first eBook ISBN was assigned. In classrooms and worksites worldwide, eBooks have become a popular medium...

The ADL Initiative made significant strides in 2019 along its three main lines of effort: modernization, policy guidance, and cross-coordination. The year’s efforts included increased collaboration with both domestic and international partners, the maturation of concepts devised and researched in...

In 2019, the ADL Initiative established a TLA Sandbox project in collaboration with the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) USALearning to accommodate technical experimentation with the 2019 TLA Reference Implementation.

The ADL Initiative supported the Interservice / Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) on 1-5 December in Orlando. This annual event attracted over 17,000 professionals, including military and industry leaders, domestic and international partners, support staff, and other stakeholders....

The ADL Initiative’s Total Learning Architecture (TLA) Working Group held its first face-to-face meeting during the Interservice / Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) on 2 December 2019. This Working Group launched in the summer of 2019 with TLA...

The National Training and Simulation Association (NTSA), in collaboration with the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, hosted iFEST 2019 at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center (Alexandria, Virginia, USA) 26-28 August 2019. Over 350 attendees from the military, government, industry, and...

The ADL Initiative placed #30 of the top 50 private and public sector organizations in the Elearning! Media Group’s 2019 Learning! 100 Awards Competition — the ninth consecutive win for the ADL Initiative. The ADL Learning Warehouse was selected for...

On 28-29 August, the ADL Initiative chaired the bi-annual Defense ADL Advisory Committee meeting. Among the topics discussed were multinational ADL coordination and DoDI 1322.26 Fungible Reference proposed updates.

At the beginning of April, the ADL Initiative hosted its annual Principal Investigator meeting to provide a more holistic view of its current and forthcoming science and technology projects, exchange information, and identify collaboration opportunities. With over 30 organizations in...

The Department of Defense (DoD) uses Adobe Flash in thousands of its e-learning courses—but that’s about to change. In 2020, Adobe will sunset this product in response to growing criticism of its security flaws. Apple ended Adobe Flash support in...

A new book exploring the future learning ecosystem The ADL Initiative recently released Modernizing Learning: Building the Future Learning Ecosystem. This open-access publication examines the shift needed to our systems and society to enable lifelong, experiential, interconnected learning journeys. The...

In November, Drs. Sae Schatz and J.J. Vogel-Walcutt addressed Navy Post Graduate School students, faculty, and staff at the Teaching and Learning Commons (TLC) Forum on the importance of developing a learning architecture. Dr. Vogel-Walcutt stressed the importance of efficiency...

The Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) officially kicked-off on 27 November, with its 2018 theme: “Launching Innovation in Learning:  Ready, Set, Disrupt.” As the name implies, this year’s event witnessed a notable shift from previous years, with more...

The Special Warfare Education Group (Airborne) (SWEG(A)) hosted the ADL Initiative’s 2018 Total Learning Architecture (TLA) Test and Demonstration event at their facility in Fort Bragg, NC, 14–17 August 2018. This event marked the second empirical trial of a TLA...

Over 280 attendees, from the public and private sectors, participated in the three-day Federal e-Learning Science and Technology symposium focused on innovation, instruction and implementation (iFEST) this 27-29 August in Alexandria, Virginia. Headlining the program were C. Fred Drummond, Deputy...

The eighth annual eLearning 100 Awards ceremony honors top global learning organizations for innovation, collaboration, and performance. 40 public-sector and 60 private-sector organizations are chosen based on three factors: Collaborative Strategies' Collaboration Index, Darden School's Learning Culture Index, and overall...

Speakers: NPS Workforce Learning and Development- Common Learning Portal Team: Dale Carpenter (Program Manager), Ryan Jennings (IT Web Products Manager), Rebecca Wyatt (Production Manager/Trainer), Molly Russell (Learning Communities Manager) Webinar: US National Park Service (NPS) Common Learning Portal event What...

Speaker: Andy Johnson, SETA Contractor Webinar: xAPI How To Working with the Vocabulary Server and Creating Profiles Have you been asked to implement xAPI in your community? Is it your job to collect data about the wide range of experiences...

Date 8/26/2019 - 8/28/2019 Location Alexandria Hilton Mark Center 5000 Seminary Road Alexandria, Virginia 22311 Tel: 703-845-1010 Theme The National Training and Simulation Association (NTSA), in collaboration with the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, is excited to announce iFEST 2019...

Event Passed iFEST 2018 and the accompanying Hackathon happened August 26 – August 29, 2018. Stay tuned for the iFEST 2019 save the date. In the meantime, check out the presentations, photos, and other materials from the event below. Visit...

Principal Investigator (PI) Meeting 3-4 April 2018 Alexandria, VA The ADL Initiative hosted its annual Principal Investigator Meeting comprised of 70+ participants, including Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) project performers and relevant government stakeholders. The event was a unique opportunity for...

In one of the first examples of its kind, VIKING 18 exercise organizers have built Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) capabilities into a largescale, multinational collective training event. VIKING 18 is a 10-day civil-military exercise, held April 2018 in Sweden, and...

Principal Investigator (PI) Meeting | 3-4 April 2018 | Alexandria, VA The ADL Initiative will host its annual Principal Investigator (PI) meeting for its R&D performers and interested government stakeholders. Over two days, PIs will provide overviews of their respective...

The Personalized eBook for Learning (PeBL) project is a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) contract aimed at advancing one of our top-level goals: Distributed Learning (DL) Modernization. The PeBL ebook is a research and development (R&D) reference implementation or “example” that...

The end of the year is a time to reflect on achievements and to set new goals for the coming year. The ADL Initiative has many reasons to celebrate its 2017 accomplishments and to expect ongoing success in 2018. 2017...

In November 2017, the ADL Initiative welcomed the Swedish Partnership Center as the newest member of the ADL Global Partnership Network. Senior leaders from the US Department of Defense and the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) conducted a signing ceremony at...

During the past year, the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative accelerated research and development efforts related to Experience API (xAPI) conformance requirements and certification. The xAPI community was engaged in the research effort, and as a result it led to...

Title: User-Tailored Privacy for TLA (Parts I & II) Dates: Part I – Wednesday, 14 NOV Part II – Wednesday, 21 NOV Time: Parts I & II – 1100-1200 EST Speaker: Bart Knijnenburg If you are developing a user-facing information...

Presenter: Bart Knijnenburg, Professor at Clemson University The Total Learning Architecture (TLA) is envisioned to rely on ubiquitous data collection and advanced user modeling techniques to provide users with personalized and pervasive learning interventions. However, with so much personal data...

This week, the ADL Initiative announces the public release of the Experience Application Programming Interface (xAPI) Learning Record Store (LRS) Test Suite and associated Adopter Registry. LRS Test Suite An LRS is a server (i.e. system capable of receiving and...

In 2016, the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative accelerated research and development efforts related to Experience API (xAPI) conformance requirements and certification. The first phase of work resulted in the community-driven Conformance Requirements for Learning Record Stores(LRS) and the corresponding...

Every day the community and buzz around the Experience API continues to grow larger, stronger, and for good reasons. We are doing incredible work together! The adoption of xAPI has increased significantly this year. While we don't have the exact...

The Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2016 is the world's largest modeling, simulation, and training event held in Orlando, Florida. Those interested in the fields of modeling and simulation (M&S), training, education, analysis, and related disciplines attend this...

ADL Initiative recently collaborated with researchers from the e-learning group, Complutense University of Madrid (Department of Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence) on their H2020 RAGE research project to create a serious games profile for the Experience API (xAPI) specification. The profile...

ADL Initiative is pleased to announce the candidate release of the Experience API (xAPI) Learning Record Store (LRS) Test Suite. As you know, LRS is part of the xAPI specification; it’s the data warehouse that receives, stores, and provides access...

Many high-quality science and technology prototypes fail to transition into real-world use, instead falling into the research-practice gap.  To address this at ADL Initiative, we strongly emphasize outreach, that is communicating early and often  with end-users, fostering collaboration networks, and...

Help Shape xAPI Certification Research In 2016, the ADL Initiative accelerated research and development efforts related to xAPI conformance testing. The first phase of work resulted in the community-driven Conformance Requirements for Learning Record Stores (LRS) and corresponding LRS Test...

The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative hosted a Principal Investigator’s meeting on 5-6 April at its Alexandria office. The meeting had a number of goals in mind: Increase the potential for interagency collaboration Share project updates and increase collaboration among ADL...

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Training Group (NTG) meeting on Individual Training and Education Developments (IT&ED) was hosted by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Force Education and Training) and the Director, Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative in the...

On Monday, August 15, more than 50 leaders from the Experience API (xAPI) and Caliper Learning Analytics Framework (Caliper) communities attended the IMS Global meeting at Utah Valley University. ADL Initiative and members from the xAPI community participated in the...

This week, Experience API (xAPI) version 1.0.3 was released. You can find the newest version of the specification here on GitHub: https://github.com/adlnet/xAPI-Spec. ADL Initiative would like to express its gratitude to the members of the xAPI Spec Group for their consistent...

ADL’s previous Community Manager, Craig Wiggins, caught up with ADL Senior Software Engineer and xAPI Spec Group organizer, Andy Johnson to talk about what this release means. Craig: So, first of all, what’s different about this version? Andy: So, functionally...

Over the past year, efforts around developing conformance requirements for the Experience API (xAPI) have been on hold. Fortunately, this is rapidly changing. We at the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative are very excited to announce two awards related to...

As many of you know, there have been ongoing efforts over the years to investigate the readiness of the Experience API (xAPI) for eventual standardization.  In the past, this included splitting the core specification into more modular documents, facilitating conversations...

Colonel Goran Šimić, Director of the Serbian ADL Partnership Center and Head of the Center for Simulations and Distance Learning at the Serbian Ministry of Defense and Serbian Army, has written an article for the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning...

The Experience API (xAPI), an open source API and technical specification developed under the ADL Initiative, provides a powerful way to store and retrieve data about learning activities of users or groups of users. The learning activity statements can present...

6-7 March 2018 The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative is hosting a Technical Planning and Integration Meeting in Orlando, FL in preparation for the TLA Demonstration scheduled for later this year in Fort Bragg, NC. The TLA system is a...

Many organizations already have large investments in Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), including software, training assets, and developer experience. Changing to a new technology like the Experience API (xAPI) can be cost prohibitive for such organizations. It is not...

Collaboration is the key to everything the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative does. We learn from the work that others are doing in the community and bring those ideas back to inform our Research and Development (R&D). This helps us...

What is xAPI? The Experience API (xAPI) is an open source specification that allows you to track any experience (i.e., formal, informal, or operational). xAPI can track reading an article or interacting with an eBook, watching a training video, chatting...

The Virtual World (VW) Sandbox allows users to collaborate on developing, designing, and playing simulations. While this is a great benefit, one of the biggest challenges in writing the VW Sandbox platform is maintaining synchronization of the world between multiple...

The Orlando Science Center hosts an event called Otronicon each year that is aimed at introducing our community and next generation learners to the gaming industry. The event focuses on emerging gaming technologies; how other industries including medical, law, science,...

If you have built any client reporting applications powered by Experience API (xAPI) statements, you know the workflow consists of the client first pulling statements from a Learning Record Store (LRS), then parsing and displaying the data. We're currently implementing...

Anthony Altieri’s custom, limited edition Odroid learning record store – showcased at xAPI Bootcamp 2015. The past ADL Initiative has run Experience API (xAPI) Design Cohorts for the past three years. The xAPI Design Cohorts were virtually collaborative experiences—chances for...

How they differ, how they are similar, and how organizations may use them Since the release of the cmi5 specification, questions have arisen regarding how it relates to the ADL Experience API (xAPI) Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) Profile....

ADL Initiative is returning from a busy and very successful week at I/ITSEC in Orlando, FL. Buzz was all around ADL Initiative as Dr. Sae Schatz kicked off the week winning best tutorial award for “Elevate your Instruction: Practical Tactics...

The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative is delighted to announce that Sae Schatz, Ph.D., has been named the new Director as of June 22, 2015. Dr. Schatz is widely respected in the distributed learning community for her work in learning...

Jonathan Poltrack accepted the Learning! 100 Award for 'Area of Excellence: Collaboration' on behalf of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative at the Enterprise Learning! Conference in Manassas, VA, which ran from 8–10 June. ADL Initiative received this award in...

CMI-5, a soon-to-be standard which is also conformant to the Experience API (xAPI), will be the focus of a 2-day summit on April 15th and 16th in Alexandria, Virginia. The meeting will take place at the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL)...

I think I can speak for all of ADL Initiative when I say that we’ve been waiting for some time to be able to say that the newest incarnation of the xAPI Design Cohort is almost ready to kickoff. We’re...

I should say up front, that I had never heard of I/ITSEC prior to starting to work for ADL Initiative.  I've been an instructional designer and developer for some time and have checked a few of the major conferences off...

Learning Technology Symposium Members of ADL Initiative’s team recently attended the Federal Government Distance Learning Association (FGDLA) Government Learning Technology Symposium at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.  The event spanned two days and many leaders from...

Earlier this year, the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative announced the opening of the submissions period for the 2014 Learning App Challenge (LAC). The goal of the LAC was for participants to create and submit innovative Apps to help students...

A lot of the "ADL buzz" of the last couple years has been around the Experience API (xAPI). While there is a lot to be excited about, making process, infrastructure, and cultural changes takes time and stability. We realize not...

ADL Initiative's Mobile Learning Needs Assessment report is now available! This report follows last year's Survey Report and summarizes the information and insights we have gleaned through literature reviews, focus groups, and survey data to inform and direct the next...

It is with great pleasure that the ADL Initiative welcomes New Zealand as a new partner in the ADL Partnership Network. Lee Graham, Team Leader of the Training Technology Unit at the New Zealand Defence College, will serve as the...

During 17-19 June, the ADL Initiative hosted two learning events about the Experience API (xAPI) at the Orlando Co-Lab. WORKSHOP Thirty participants from the Orlando area attended the 17 June session, billed as an introductory workshop for those interested in...

It is with great pleasure that the ADL Initiative welcomes the country of Serbia as a new partner in the ADL Partnership Network. Representatives from the Office of Secretary of Defense and the country of Serbia completed signing the Memorandum...

Dr. Elaine Raybourn, ADL Next Generation Learner Team Lead, participated in a panel that addressed the question of "U.S. National Investments in the Future of Games?" at the 2014 Game Developers Conference (GDC). This year the GDC, held during March...

With 2014 rung in and winter break at an end, we at ADL Initiative want to start the new year out right. During 2013, several milestones were achieved for the Experience API (xAPI), and our goal is to make 2014...

The Learning Registry contains thousands of metadata and paradata records describing educational resources available on the Internet. These records came from many different contributors using different schemas. How can this collection of data be harnessed to create new applications? ADL...

According to Semico’s report on Augmented Reality, 864 million high-end cell phones will be AR-enabled by 2014 with revenues related to AR technology approaching $600 billion by 2016. While still in its infancy, mobile AR is starting to drive innovation...

As we wrote about in our last blog post, ADL Initiative's Next-Generation Learner Team has been performing a cognitive task analysis (CTA) on the gameplay and design of Portal 2, a puzzle/logic game developed by Valve Software. Portal 2 had...

The work on the xAPI has continued since Version 1.0.0 was released in April 2013. In the months since the initial release, the community has identified a number of non-breaking changes that make the specification clearer. As a result, as...

ADL Initiative's mobile learning survey report is now available! The report is full of valuable information and insights to help us with the needs assessment and the next phases of the MoTIF project. It also has some interesting findings for...

ADL Initiative was honored at the 2013 Enterprise Learning! Conference & Expo where it received a Learning! 100 Award from Elearning! Magazine. The Learning! 100 awards recognize organizations for their outstanding learning and development programs, learning culture and performance. ADL...

A recent study by ADL with Sheppard Air Force Base has shown that a video game having specific design features (i.e., implicit rules, implicit rule changes, dynamic shifting environments, open endedness, and implicit feedback) can enhance specific cognitive capabilities after...

What is RUSSEL? The Re-Usability Support System for eLearning (RUSSEL) is an open-source software project to manage and repurpose courses, documents and multimedia assets. It will make content more useful through a rich metadata environment with ratings, analytics and comments...

The Aviation Industry Computer-Based-Training Committee (AICC) and the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative have agreed to collaborate to improve and solidify the Experience API (formerly referred to as "Tin Can"), ensuring its viability for the aviation industry and other communities...

It is with great pleasure that the ADL Initiative welcomes the country of Poland as a new partner in the ADL Partnership Lab network. Representatives from the Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the country of Poland officially signed...

Implications for Group Learning with Intelligent Tutoring Systems In the 1980s I taught in an education project called Project SEED which teaches algebra and calculus to elementary school students who are classified as both belonging to a minority and within...

Facebook's new "Graph Search" technology allows queries into the "Social Graph" such as, "Which of my friends like road biking, live in Pittsburgh, and like 'Bianchi' (a bicycle brand with a loyal following)?" By looking at the questions we need...