Computer-based instruction – a proven approach – must adapt to fulfill the growing needs of military and interagency training. This future vision requires innovative toolsets to help bridge the gap between academic, individual instruction and large-scale, mission rehearsals. Given the constrained training budgets of today and tomorrow, one must innovate to enable team training.
This paper provides analysis for the existing military training structure and offers insights into how it can be adapted to be lightweight, agile, and more cost efficient at training small teams in preparation for existing large scale exercises. This approach fosters mastery by providing the training audience autonomy of time and team – enabling small team training at a time and place of their choosing. Our innovation’s simplicity has demonstrated the powerful capability of a distributed and immersive application. The paper closes with lessons learned gathered from exercises conducted between 2010 through the present.
Small Team Training Delivery Service: Mastery in Times of Austerity
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Small Team Training Delivery Service: Mastery in Times of Austerity
Ms. Nancy Johnson and Mr. Mark Friedman
Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC)
100 CTC Drive
Johnstown, PA 15904
{johnsonn, friedmam} @ctc.com
Lt Col (ret) Gerald R. Gendron, Jr.
SimIS, Inc.
200 High Street, #305
Portsmouth, VA 23704
gerald.gendron@simisinc.com
ABSTRACT
Computer-based instruction – a proven approach – must adapt to fulfill the growing needs of
military and interagency training. This future vision requires innovative toolsets to help bridge
the gap between academic, individual instruction and large-scale, mission rehearsals. Given the
constrained training budgets of today and tomorrow, one must innovate to enable team training.
This paper provides analysis for the existing military training structure and offers insights into
how it can be adapted to be lightweight, agile, and more cost efficient at training small teams in
preparation for existing large scale exercises. This approach fosters mastery by providing the
training audience autonomy of time and team – enabling small team training at a time and place
of their choosing. Our innovation’s simplicity has demonstrated the powerful capability of a
distributed and immersive application. The paper closes with lessons learned gathered from
exercises conducted between 2010 through the present.
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Introduction
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...”
--Charles Dickens
These words were penned in the year 1859 by the eminent English author, Charles Dickens.
They come from the novel A Tale of Two Cities which is set in London and Paris during the time
of the French Revolution. The events of that era have once again captivated people’s imagination
with the 2012 cinema release of Les Misérables. While many people are familiar with Dickens’
first dozen words, the next two dozen words are eerily applicable today as they were over 150
years ago, “it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity…”
Small groups – long-standing institutional mores – revolutionary approaches –– motivation
– austerity
These qualities are as appropriate today to describe the defense-industrial complex as they were
in labeling the bleak, yet hopeful times, at the turn of the 18th century. Joint training is facing a
number of challenges:
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reduced budgets for operations and maintenance of legacy systems
a generation of up and coming trainees hungering for methods beyond in-class and live
instruction
increasing pressures to cooperate and prioritize with unified action partners to leverage
solutions across a spectrum of military, interagency, and international countries, bodies
and agencies
increased pressure to motivate and engage military learners, who themselves are more
challenging than ever to motivate
This paper will provide a summary background of the evolution of computer-based training over
the last two decades, highlighting both the enhancements and challenges along that path. Having
an idea of the gaps to fulfill, the paper will then consider partnerships of military, interagency,
and international partners and their view of a future vision to bridge the gap between academic,
individual instruction and large-scale, mission rehearsals. Finally the paper considers the human
dimension by portraying the benefits to mission performance based on motivated training
audiences, using data and lessons collected since 2010 based on new distributed training
technologies.
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Computer-based Training to Distributed Learning
Distance learning has provided many advantages to DoD and academia over the past twenty
years, but to continue to yield positive efficiencies, a future vision needs to come to fruition. It is
not enough today, to simply use the reason “to save money” in order to place a course online
instead of conducting a face-to-face course. The audiences are more savvy, they have grown up
never knowing a period of time before a DVD and WiFi, and are at home perusing Second Life
as they are the first, or real life. They have never heard of, must less seen, a user manual for a
software package, and thus, the traditional ISD-created online course is simply not going to
engage or motivate the student of 2013 in the way required to continue toward training real
probem-solving skills. The known training gap which exists between academic, individual
instruction and the learning which takes place during large, collective activity-driven rehearsals
-- must be bridged.
“Gamers have logged thousands of hours rapidly analyzing new situations, interacting with
people they don’t know, and learning to solve problems quickly and independently. DoD must
recognize the fundamental shift in the analytical and strategic problem-solving skills and
techniques of the next generation of soldiers, and adapt its training and motivational
methodologies accordingly.” (IDA, July 2006) Team training needs to be molded, developed
and morphed into this bridge as the solution which will connect these relatively close entities.
Adapting Learning to Leverage the Technologies
The existing method to prepare a team in DoD has remained the same for more than a decade.
Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was one of the first Joint collective exercises which
received national attention - and let the general public know just how the training process
worked. What was and maybe still is, a rigid schedule of preparation by individuals learning
some basic tasks on their own, prior to getting together as a collective (i.e. thousands at the same
time) to rehearse a very complex rehearsal which itself follows a pre-written guidebook (like the
script to a 1,500 actor play). One problem, with this use case, is that many of the individuals do
not accomplish their preparatory training prior to the collective training. The other critical issue
to address is that many of the participants might learn what to do from a single position in the
system, and yet be assigned to perform duties in a totally different position during the rehearsal.
Of course, both of these weaknesses can be addressed if the individuals were able to spend even
a little amount of time learning in a small-team environment, where they could practice one
position in the morning, and another position in the afternoon -- thereby expanding their ability
to be agile and flexible when they are assigned in the larger rehearsal.
What we would like the reader to consider, is how this can be adapted to be lightweight, agile,
and more cost efficient at training small teams in preparation for existing large scale exercises.
Mastery through Autonomy
We have explained the many advances in and advantages of distributed learning technologies as
they have evolved over the last two decades. But there are still gaps that remain as opportunities
to be leveraged - namely, consideration of the learning processes in relation to the people
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participating in the training events. A particularly important area is that of team training
methodologies.
A key dimension in designing and evaluating distributed learning systems in the future will be
the human dimension. Among the most widely regarded methods to evaluating the human
element of training is the Kirkpatrick Four Level Evaluation Model. It was first published in the
Journal of American Society of Training Directors as a series of articles in 1959 [1]. Figure 1
shows the basic structure of the Kirkpatrick model [2]. The essential elements of the Kirkpatrick
Model have endured for over 50 years and include four hierarchical levels: reactions, learning,
behavior, and results. Traditionally, the model has been used to explain the increasing
sophistication - and hence increasing value - as training strives to move students towards higher
and higher levels of the model. Beginning with “reaction” (did you enjoy the training?), most
training unfortunately only reaches “learning” (did you score well on the exam?). This falls short
of the benefits found in the top two levels which can have more dramatic impacts on growing
individuals and increasing business performance.
Figure 1: Kirkpatrick Four Level Evaluation Model. Showing increased value to organizations.
Nickols (2011) takes the Kirkpatrick a step further by adding a methodology to use the four
levels as a validation approach to training development. Figure 2 shows the same four levels, but
notice the downward pointing arrow along the left. The basic intent is to determine the desired
business results (level 4) and translate those into behaviors the team members might attain (level
3) to support those business results. This has a direct correlation in the bottom two levels in
terms of designing the training. How might this approach be of assistance in designing
distributed training for large teams? How does this relate to changing behaviors and attitudes?
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Figure 2: Kirkpatrick Model Used for Validation. Using traditional model in reverse
to design training.
Daniel Pink, acclaimed author and student of human motivation, provides a simple yet powerful
answer to these questions. His synthesis of the psychological literature presented in his book
Drive complements the idea surrounding Kirkpatrick’s third level. Pink wished to learn what
truly motivated people to do great things, learn new skills, and create new ideas. He summed it
up in a pithy, Twitter-sized summary of his entire book, “Carrots & sticks are so last century.
Drive says for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery & purpose” (Pink,
2009, p. 203). In less space than a 140 character tweet, he captures the essence of his book and
provides us a great clue about motivation as it applies to learning. In fact, he dedicates an entire
appendix to parents and educators noting, “there’s a mismatch between what science knows and
schools do” (p. 174). What he means by this is that the psychological literature is abundant in
how to increase motivation and learning, yet training facilities are stuck in outmoded training
methods. How might his three elements of autonomy, mastery and purpose aid the joint training
community?
Pink points to countless scholarly works that shows the old-fashioned (but all too often found)
carrot-and-stick approach used in work, home, and education and training. Carrots and sticks are
geared towards If-Then mentalities. This is found in training by if I memorize this material, then
I will pass the test and move on. Will the student recall the material? Perhaps. Will it change
their behavior? Likely not. What works, according to Pink (2009), is a move towards creative yet
challenging tasks and exercises to engage the students. This in turn leads to higher internalization
of the training material. Using his three elements, Pink offers these three questions for trainers:
● Am I offering students any autonomy over how and when to do this work?
● Does this assignment promote mastery by offering a novel, engaging task (as opposed to
rote reformulation of something already covered in class)?
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● Do my students understand the purpose of this assignment? that is, can they see how
doing this additional activity at home contributes to the larger enterprise in which the
class is engaged (p. 175)
It is hoped that the reader (especially trainers) can see the value inherent in providing the training
audience with a degree of freedom to pursue mastery. It has been witnessed in special operations
qualifying courses and at-home music lessons - allow the student a distributed, mobile training
device and see how often and how diligently they work at the problem in order to figure it out to master it. Not because it was part of class time, but because they had the autonomy to satisfy
their urge for mastery. The connections between Pink’s work and Kirkpatrick’s model are clear get beyond level 2 learning to allow autonomy, hence driving mastery and a change in behavior.
Ultimately, performance increases. Technology and distributed training approaches provide the
training community with the means to seize this opportunity.
Lessons Learned
For at least the last two years, Joint Knowledge Online has hosted and distributed dozens of
small team exercises via its Small Group Scenario Trainer (SGST) toolset. From one hour
refresher exercises, where as few as 2-5 terminal learning objectives were designed to be
practiced and learned -- all the way up to a multi-day exercise for twenty staff to practice a larger
number of skills which they had learned during the previous weeks, thereby utilizing the
distributed tool as their culminating exercise. In each of these example cases though, the students
were able to actively demonstrate their knowledge and skills of these learning objectives, not
through multiple choice or memorization, but by actively doing the tasks which clearly mimic
the real-life tasks which their jobs potentially could entail. This is an excellent example of
utilizing Kirkpatrick’s third level to stimulate behavioral change. Preparing for Humanitarian
Assistance projects or Disaster Relief efforts are just a few of the scenarios which active and
reserve duty military are likely to need to be skilled in, and to date, there has not existed an
efficient way to train these teams together in preparation of performing these life-saving duties.
Leveraging the anywhere in distance learning, SGST enables teams to train together from
anywhere, and if only half a team can participate, then possibly the other half might train
afterward - with actual humans playing the roles necessary to recreate the intended environment
to enable the training objectives to be exercised.
Summary
Today’s austere times call for revolutionary and innovative approaches to surmount the
challenges we face in joint training. Some of the greatest innovations in military approaches have
come during times of fiscal challenge or uncertain security environments – such as the U2 spy
plane. Distributed learning systems are technically mature and sociological acceptable – the time
is now to support larger exercises with agile and cost effective approaches. This saves materiel,
personnel, and schedule costs. Dickens closed his book The Tale of Two Cities with these words,
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to
than I have ever known." What may this foretell of the legacy we – joint training professionals –
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have the opportunity and responsibility to leave for the upcoming generation? It will be a far, far
better thing that we do by resolving to open-mindedly consider those proven alternatives like
computer-based training. Such a basic approach can bloom into widely-used and effective
systems to transform joint training while having impacts on the behaviors and performance of
training audiences well into 2020.
As Dr. Curtis Bonk stated in 2005 "Certain skills gained and practiced by gamers in massive
multiplayer online gaming environments closely parallel those required by a military
transforming itself to operating under the concept of network centric warfare. The technologies
and practice methodologies employed in multiplayer games also hold great potential to provide
appropriate network centric warfare training environments." DoD Training must continue to
adapt and evolve, borrowing the best from other disciplines such as gaming, MOOC’s, and other
innovations, so that team training can truly achieve autonomy of place and time. Only then will
more of the “ilities” be achieved [4] and warfighters prepared the best that they can be before
being tasked in real action.
REFERENCES:
[1] Clark, D. (n.d.). “Kirkpatrick's Four Level Evaluation Model”. Performance, learning,
leadership, & knowledge. Retrieved from
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/isd/kirkpatrick.html.
[2] Nickols, F. (2011, 21 April). “Leveraging the Kirkpatrick Model”. TJ Blogs. Retrieved from
http://www.trainingjournal.com/blog/articles-blogs-leveraging-the-kirkpatrick-model/.
[3] Pink, D. (2009). Drive. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
[4] IDA "MS&G, When Worlds Collide: A Primer for Potential", July 2006, pg 155)