Applying Collaborative and E-learning Tools to Military Distance Learning

Book excerpt: This report is a resource guide for those concerned with using collaborative and e-learning environments; those that use the Internet in a military training setting. The report is intended for training developers and planners, instructional designers, and program evaluators. The report offers a broad examination of findings from the educational literature, where the preponderance of research on e-learning tools and collaborative learning (i.e., groups of learners who have a common goal) has been conducted. Reviewed first are the emergence of e-learning tools and constructivism, the role of the instructor in such approaches, and the increasing importance of learner-centered approaches to instruction. Appropriate quantitative and qualitative research methodologies are then described. A summary of relevant findings on collaborative tools, individual differences, and learning communities is also provided. Suggestions are made for experiments that test the adaptability to military training environments of e-learning and collaborative learning methods emanating from education. Ten primary and 17 secondary experiments are devised that derive from current psychological principles in cognition, motivation, social factors, and individual differences as applied to Internet-enabled learning.