1. The Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative and the Handle System William H Blackmon, PhD Chief Technical Officer Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative

2. The Department of Defense spends billions of dollars on training every year. Types of training: Microsoft Word basics Aircraft maintenance Intelligence things we cant talk about There is a long history of using computers to produce effective training

3. ADL was established in 1997 to increase the effectiveness of training in the DoD ADL tackled the problem of self-paced, managed learning Created SCORM, which establishes a baseline for creating and delivering training A SCORM course is a zip file containing everything needed for a Learning Management System to run the course SCORM has been widely successful in the DoD, corporate, K12, and higher-ed sectors

4. Nearly identical training content is developed by different groups because: I didnt know they were developing content Their training doesnt exactly meet my needs Their training doesnt match my look and feel I have to guarantee the accuracy of the content Theres no financial incentive to me Its easier to develop new content than to find and adapt old content

5. The ADL-Registry is a central website for the DoD To register the existence of SCORM content To search for existing content Using a metadata schema acceptable to the community Military culture dictated that the content remain under local control So the ADL-Registry points to the content

6. The ADL-Registry uses Handles As the GUIDs for the content As a way to manage persistent IDs for content in a world with ever-changing URLs To manage authorization rights for users of the registry

7. But we see more interesting uses for Handles in our near future!

8. Multiple Resolution Using a single Handle to name a training resource, how do I find the content on: SIPR net NIPR net Internet Disconnected Submarines? We need hdl:2000/1 encodings to work instead of relying on http://hdl.handle.net We need an automatic resolution system

9. Versioned Content The DoD depends on authenticated content When content is updated, we need to: Keep the Handle to old content active Tell users the content has been updated Tell users where the new content is Let the users decide which content is right for their needs hdl:2000/1?version=latest hdl:2000/1?availableversions

10. Handles in Content Packages A course table of contents could look like this: Local context-setting learning object hdl:2000/2 (shared learning object) hdl:1890/4 (shared learning obejct) Local summary learning object

13. Questions? Bill Blackmon bill.blackmon@adlnet.gov Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative www.adlnet.gov adlcommunity.net ADL-Registry www.adlregistry.org