Distance learning: 'Marinenet' reaches out to deployed troops.

• Author: Jean, Grace
• Position: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

QUANTICO, VA.--The Marine Corps is taking advantage of distance learning technologies to provide training and educational opportunities to troops here and in the Middle East.

The strain of current operations often curtails the Marines' ability to go through traditional training drills before they deploy. To help solve the problem, the Corps created a distance learning enterprise network called MarineNet, which delivers electronic courseware and interactive multimedia instruction to Marines around the globe.

"We've always had the capacity to do it, but there wasn't a lot of interest, or, I would say, there wasn't a requirement for this," said Terrence Kerrigan, director of the Marine Corps College of Continuing Education, which manages the eight-year-old distance learning enterprise.

Kerrigan and his staff usually meet with Marine commanders every April to discuss new training requirements, but they have short-circuited their system to facilitate the speedy development of online courses for deployed troops. Among the courses that are most needed are those focused on countering improvised explosive devices, advanced marksmanship, convoy operations and combat life-saving.

Before the war, when leaders identified a requirement, the usual response would be that the team could do it, but that it might take "x" number of months or it might take a year to develop a distance learning course, said Kerrigan. Today, the Corps needs such training requirements fulfilled in weeks and months.

"That's very difficult in any venue, to try to keep up and train. It puts additional challenge on distance learning because of the time it takes to develop it. So in some of those cases, actually, we're out of the interactive multimedia business and more into capturing by video," said Kerrigan.

For example, when a requirement for culture and language training arose in theater in the Middle East, the Corps took an expert who had given such lectures to various units and videotaped his briefings in a studio at Quantico. Within 10 days, developers merged up the lectures with PowerPoint presentations and put it all up on MarineNet for users to view.

MarineNet was piloted in 1998 and went into full operation in 2000 with six course offerings. Today it is Internet-accessible and offers 1,600 courses that are free to active and reserve Marines, their spouses and dependents, as well as other military services. Anyone in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System...