Defense ADL Advisory Committee (DADLAC)

What’s The DADLAC?

In 1997, in the earliest days of distributed learning, DoD established the Total Force Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Action Team to document and coordinate distributed learning initiatives throughout the defense community. Today, that original concept has evolved into the Defense ADL Advisory Committee (or DADLAC, pronounced “dad-lack”). The DADLAC acts as an advisory body to support distributed learning policy stewardship, resource and information exchange, and monitoring of emerging distributed learning technologies and techniques across the Defense community.

The DADLAC members come together at least twice a year in a forum hosted by the ADL Initiative to troubleshoot challenges and share solutions together, and provide input on policy.

Who’s Part of DADLAC?

The ADL Initiative, part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, chairs the DADLAC. Core members of the committee include designated military and civilian distributed learning leaders (roughly, at the O6 or equivalent level) from:

• Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC)
• Naval Education and Training Command (NETC)
• Air Force Air Education and Training Command (AETC)
• Marine Corps Training and Education Command (TECOM)
• Joint Staff J7/Joint Knowledge Online (JKO)
• National Guard Bureau (NGB)
• DoD Chief Learning Officer (CLO)

Frequently, representatives from other organizations, such as the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO), coordinate with the DADLAC or are otherwise invited to participate on an ad-hoc basis. Starting in August 2018, the Distance Education Coordination Council (DECC) and DADLAC agreed to hold one joint annual meeting to combine efforts and aid each other in their respective task areas.

What Does DADLAC Do?

DoD Instruction 1322.26 (“Distributed Learning”), describes the DADLAC’s authorities and responsibilities, including:

• Promote distributed learning collaboration across DoD
• Foster information and resource sharing to maximize ROI
• Investigate emerging distributed learning capabilities for DoD utility
• Identify common deficiencies and recommend R&D priorities
• Recommend updates to DoD Instruction 1322.26, when applicable
• Advise the DoD distributed learning community on:
  • Implementing high-quality measurement and analysis
  • Safely and accurately recording learning experience data
  • Exchanging data among the DoD Components’ systems
  • Adoption of distributed learning standards and specifications
  • Specification conformance testing methods
  • Other interoperability considerations