Mobile Interactive Training: Tablets, Readers, and Phones—Oh, My!

Navy Non-Resident Training Courses (NRTCs) are self-study, enlisted training courses used to learn and advance in a Navy occupation, or rate. Until recently, these courses were entirely text based; however, the release of Adobe Acrobat 9 in 2008 enabled development of Level III-interactive PDFs with user-controlled animations, audio, videos, 3D images, and graded assessments with bi-directional remediation. With their media-rich content and engaging interactivity, the new NRTCs were well received by both the client and the end users. However, to meet the needs of today's military, training products need to be as broadly deployable as the forces that use them. For many young people, including the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines of today’s military, hand-held devices such as smartphones and tablets have taken the place of desktops. Besides being lightweight and portable, they are capable of supporting a wide variety of applications touching every aspect of life. However, in the race to build new products to increase market share, corporations have produced devices with widely varying capabilities and support for the interactive features of the NRTCs. This paper reports an ongoing project to leverage the capabilities of mobile technologies to field Level III-interactive NRTCs. It describes challenges encountered, optional solutions proposed, technical breakthroughs achieved, and a conversion tool under development. The benefits are noteworthy: By providing service members anytime/anyplace access to interactive, media-rich training, mobile technologies ca