Gro Frølund

A growing proportion of today’s educational activity, civilian as well as military, takes place in virtual learning environments. A corollary of this growth is the emerging concern that the educational value of information and communication technology (ICT) is under-used by educators. There are also professional concerns that ICT may even undermine the effectiveness of teaching in some instances. A recent report notes that our educational institutions are ill-prepared pedagogically for making the most of technology. It asserts that simply adding twenty first century technologies to twentieth century teaching practices will “dilute the effectiveness of teaching”. Since our military institutions are currently adopting new technologies extensively, this issue is a pressing one. We need a deeper understanding of how e-learning affects learners in a military context. For this reason, the present study has used a series of qualitative interviews to map the learning experiences of officers from the Royal Danish Defence College. A number of questions animate the study. Firstly, can we identify certain factors that have created increased learning benefit when we come to evaluate the strategies, methods, and media employed in our teaching? Moreover, what are the salient features of the way officers – in this instance, Danish officers – perceive their own learning cultures and styles? In turn, how should this affect our course design? The study reveals that learners’ engagement levels, and the likelihood of them harbouring frustrations, often relate to their course’s capacity to offer forms of collaboration. The data suggests that these learners deem collaboration to be part of a military ethos. Hence, unless the didactics underpinning our virtual learning environments align with cultural traits of this kind, they are likely to induce frustration rather than engagement. In view of these results, the paper will make recommendations on course design and pedagogical development