One of the ongoing challenges the military faces is the need to do more with less. Having to accommodate an increasing pace, complexity, and scope of operational and institutional training requirements with increasing limitations on decreasing resources (time, manpower, budget) means military and defense industries require training strategies that can effectively leverage modern advancements in learning pedagogy as well as innovative technologies to convey different classifications of knowledge simultaneously, rapidly, with a high rate of retention, and with a proven success rate in the ability for learners to transfer that knowledge into the field. This need has been driving the initiative to modernize training; however, as the advent of the global pandemic has demonstrated, we don’t simply need to apply modernized learning pedagogies to a pre-existing training landscape; we need to strategically modify our training model into an adaptive learning landscape.
From the augmentation of real-world learning with digital resources to the creation of multi-user virtual environments (MUVE), to the ability to facilitate different levels of mediated immersion, the adoption of innovative training technologies can disrupt the limitations formerly set by traditional training to provide much more training success from an experience that requires significantly fewer resources. However, building a successful and adaptive learning structure requires more than the adoption of the newest technology. In this presentation, I will rely on current industry examples and current research into the science behind learning to discuss the challenges that are posed by adaptive learning and the best practices for creating virtual multi-learner training that can successfully balance physical verisimilitude, cognitive realism, and learner presence to achieve effective training that can properly adapt to accommodate a future of uncertainty, both in terms of incoming new technologies and new global challenges.