On 2-3 April, BALTDEFCOL hosted the experts on advanced distance learning (ADL) Dr. Gokay Sursal (Allied Command Transformation), Dr. Robert Wisher (Office of the US Secretary of Defense), Mr. Joe Camacho (US Joint Forces Command) and Major Joerg Butterwegge (ACT). ADL experts had a meeting with the Commandant of BALTDEFCOL, BrigGen Gundars Abols, in between fruitful talks.

ADL integrates technology to facilitate education when time and space separate tutor from student. BALTDEFCOL seeks to maintain currency with these new tools as well as more formal links with NATO agencies and like-minded organizations. ADL is not new; it is simply the application of electronic and remote methods to learning by correspondence, a principle that has been applied successfully in education since the 19th century. BALTDEFCOL is nevertheless in exploratory mode with these new methods, as they require substantial faculty development for the adaptation or design of courses and their delivery. The meeting enabled ACT and US representatives to explain the fundamental changes that have occurred with NATO\'s learning management system (LMS). In addition to the generous offer of cooperation extended by ACT of lending course development assistance and hosting privileges to BALTDEFCOL, Allied Command Transformation is offering training and use of an improved LMS free of charge. The new LMS provides powerful feedback and student assessment capabilities, which should help BALTDEFCOL conduct course management with even greater rigour, transparency and efficiency. Mostly, these systems are attractive (especially in their survey and statistics generation capacities) because they cut processing time by a wide margin. From a course development point of view, stronger ties with agencies dealing with state of the art instructional design methods should not only enable at some point BALTDEFCOL to create its own online courses; it will also help in applying more effect to onsite teaching as well. As a first step, however, BALTDEFCOL staff may be tempted to use open source courseware offered free of charge by NATO to supplement teaching, replace lectures or readings, introduce pre-reading or pre-learning packages, all measures that could deepen the education dispensed at BALTDEFCOL. These remain small steps, however, on the road to developing an autonomous ADL capability. In the short term, BALTDEFCOL staff will have to be selected and trained to help develop the faculty and support staff with the tools made available. One has to look forward to these developments, to appear in further detail when BALTDEFCOL will be represented at the NATO/PfP Education and Training Network and the ADL Forum.