Navy e-Learning Now Offers Direct Access

By Ed Barker, Naval Education and Training Command Public Affairs

PENSACOLA, Fla. (NNS) -- Delivering on their goal of providing access to Navy training anytime, anyplace, the Navy Education and Training Command and the Sea Warrior Program Office announced Feb. 13 the availability of direct Internet access to Navy e-Learning (NeL) content.

"Most Navy Learners were previously accessing NeL through Navy Knowledge Online," said Hank Reeves, NeL project director. "That was a multi-step process that is now significantly streamlined with the ability to access courses directly, without going through NKO."

Using the direct NeL link of https://www.aas.prod.nel.training.navy.mil will take you directly to the 'My Learning' and 'Course Catalog' tabs of the NeL learning management system after login.

"Going directly to NeL will make searching for their desired content much easier," said Brenda McCreary, NKO service desk manager. "If you enter through NKO and use the NKO search engine looking for courses, you may get numerous returns that aren't very helpful. Going directly to NeL lets you use their search engine and that gets you strictly learning-related returns, streamlining finding the course you are looking for."

Although direct access to NeL is available through the Internet, a Common Access Card (CAC) is still required for NeL login. Courses on NeL have been standardized to run using the Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

"Many of our courses take advantage of the latest in multi-media content to improve the learning experience," Reeves added. "In order to ensure compatibility with these courses, NeL provides configuration guides for many of the latest versions of IE. NeL also provides a plug-in analyzer to help customers confirm they are able to access and run the multi-media content, and both of these services are on one page. To access them, customers may simply click on the 'Browser Configuration' link, located in the NeL Help section, on the right-hand side of the 'My Learning' page."

According to Reeves, NeL is the world's largest learning management system in terms of volume.

"Virtually every Sailor, government civilian and contractor uses NeL to keep current with required General Military Training, including the newly-updated Department of Defense Cyber Awareness Challenge Course," said Reeves. "Last year, the Cyber Awareness Challenge course had more than 232,000 completions, and last year we had more than 4 million completions for all courses."

"From the beginning, it was a goal as we implemented our new Learning Management System to offer direct access to our NeL users in addition to access through NKO," added Reeves. "Although NKO was designed as a one-stop-shop portal for the lion's share of Navy electronic content, allowing access options for our customers only makes sense."

Since 2001, Sailors have depended on Navy e-Learning (NeL) to help advance their careers and stay current with training requirements. Courses range from Privacy and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Awareness Training - required of all Sailors, Marines, civilians, and contractors - to specific training for individual units. Trainees using NeL complete between four and five million online courses annually from an offering of more than 8, 700 courses. The Naval Education and Training Command (NETC) relies on NeL for use in schoolhouses for individual skills and skill refresher training.