Fixing Distance Learning
Abstract
Since 1920, when General John A. Lejeune first brought distance learning (DL) to the Marine Corps, Marines have enrolled in over 13,800,000 courses. His intent behind this "experiment" was to help educate Marines, to improve them professionally, and to assist in relieving the boredom of post-World War I activities. Distance learning has come a long way since then. Now video teleconferencing and interactive multimedia instruction (IMI) supplement paper-based courses through electronic instruction. Under the Training and Education Command (TECOM), there are two main organizations that manage DL for the Marine Corps: the Marine Corps Institute (MCI) and the College of Continuing Education (CCE), which was formed in 1997 and subsequently merged with another unit from TECOM. As budget and training time constraints increase, the importance of Marines using DL to train has increased as well. This has caused some growing pains between the two organizations and has prompted Marines to ask "Which media is best" and "Who's in charge"? The Marine Corps can remedy this disjointed command structure, poor unity of effort, and lack of coordination that adversely affect students by unifying MCI and CCE under one command.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA498313
Entities
People
- J. P. Burgess
Organizations
- Marine Corps University