Smart Machinery Spaces

The Department of Defense is pursuing a program to convert thousands of hours of courseware to an Internet or intranet-based distance learning system. The potential benefits of ADL technologies include providing greater access to learning, incorporatingadvanced technologies into instruction, and achieving savings in instructor time, student costs, and reduced infrastructure.On the other hand, the potential disadvantages of distance learning include poor quality instructional content, loss of student motivation, detachment of learners from the instructional community, and high drop-out rates. To address this problem, thisproposal describes a two-pronged effort to (a) derive instructional guidelines for developing distance learning courseware and (b) develop a toolbox/intelligent advisor to present these guidelines in a format that is easily accessible and informative tothe user. There has been phenomenal growth in recent years in distance learning courses in education, industry, and the military, yet most institutions lack the expertise to develop distance learning courseware in an online environment. This project willresult in a software application that will provide course development/management capabilities to support instructional design for distance learning in the military, government, and industry.